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Under EPA’s final Clean Power Plan, states must submit initial compliance plans or demonstrate progress toward that goal by September 2016. The Synapse Clean Power Plan Toolkit can help state agencies, public interest groups, and others zero in on cost-effective compliance plan options for any state or region affected by the rulemaking.

In a series of recent briefs on the consumer costs of low-emissions futures, Synapse demonstrates that a Clean Energy Future scenario that exceeds the emissions targets of EPA’s Clean Power Plan can also lower electricity bills nationwide. The idea that investing heavily in clean energy and energy efficiency programs will save households money may be surprising to some, but in the third and final brief in the series, released today, Synapse discusses the logic behind why this is the case and why—if it’s so appealing—states haven’t already embarked on similar trajectories.

New federal environmental regulations call for substantial emissions reductions from U.S. power grids. For a system designed for fossil fuel resources, this will mean transforming the grid to accommodate large increases in renewable energy resources. Opponents of such regulations claim that the integration of these resources will impose high costs on the system, in particular those related to maintaining reliability standards. A new Synapse study finds that these claims are overblown, and that the costs to integrate increased amounts of wind and solar energy are minimal. Actual costs found by integration studies across the country are on the order of half a cent per kilowatt-hour of energy the resource produces, according to the Synapse literature review.

A key challenge that EPA, state agencies, and public interest groups involved in Clean Power Plan compliance planning are likely to face during the development of state plans, trading program initiation, and compliance demonstration, has to do with how emissions displacement interacts with state compliance options—and rate-based options in particular.