Best Practices Report Walks Consumer Advocates through 5 Key Steps for Developing Clean Power Plan Compliance Plans

The flexibility of EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plans allows for many potential pathways to compliance, and state consumer advocates now have a roadmap to navigate their decision-making process. Synapse today published a report on behalf of the National Association for State Utility Consumer Advocates (NASUCA) that will help consumer advocates work with other state agencies and stakeholders to develop a compliance plan that not only meets EPA’s emissions targets but protects consumers from shouldering the burden of excessive implementation costs.

The report, Best Practices in Planning for Clean Power Plan Compliance, walks consumer advocates through steps for formulating a compliance plan, from engaging key agencies and stakeholders to designing a modeling process that will illuminate which plan best meets each state’s goals. While the final EPA rule will not be released until mid-summer 2015, the report gives consumer advocates—critical players in the planning stage from a ratepayer perspective—a head start in effective participation.

Key steps for developing Clean Power Plan compliance plans

The report was prepared as part of a larger project in which Synapse is providing outreach and informational materials related to the Clean Power Plan to NASUCA and its members. Synapse previously prepared a report explaining the details of the proposed rule, and is currently performing multi-state modeling analysis using the Clean Power Plan Planning Tool (CP3T) to identify and explain the challenges and opportunities related to multi-state compliance. The work is funded through a grant from The Energy Foundation.