Electric utilities say yes to 80% less carbon, but “not now”

The EEI (Edison Electric Institute) represents about 70% of the electric utility companies in the United States and it has outlined a plan to reduce carbon emissions by 80%. That’s in line with what Obama is looking to accomplish with his new administration. The catch? The EEI won’t commit to any sort of major overhaul until 2050.

It considers mid term goals to be 10-20 years from now and primarily any gains in that time period will come from renewable energy and efficiencies squeezed out of the existing power grid infrastructure.

Putting aside the need to act quickly for a moment though, some of what EEI has to say sounds reasonable. It suggests a “price collar” which would restrict the range of acceptable charges for carbon. That makes sense because otherwise wild pricing changes could send consumers and businesses into a tailspin similar to what we saw recently with barrels of oil.

Taxing carbon makes good sense from a sustainability perspective, and Obama will likely push for it after taking office. The EEI is very aware of the incoming pressure from the incoming administration and it’s acting preemptively to protect the industry’s business model.

In fact, according to an EEI press release, its CEOs deserve “praise”.

Our CEOs worked diligently over a period of months to reach this point, and they deserve to be commended for their efforts to make a constructive industry contribution to the deliberations that soon will be under way in Congress.

The bittersweet piece of this is the lack of action up until this point. Given the stranglehold electric utilities have on their customer base it seems reasonable that they could have invested in new, cleaner energy long ago. But just like with many other businesses, electric utilities decided it was easier to nurse an existing cash cow rather than innovate toward what’s next.