Recommended Principles and Best Practices for State Renewable Portfolio Standards

In Spring 2008, the State-Federal RPS Collaborative was established, with support from the Energy Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy through the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The Collaborative’s objective is to facilitate dialogue and learning among RPS stakeholders, with an emphasis on state-to-state and state-to-federal discussions. Guided by a Steering Committee composed of representatives from the states, the federal government, and national non-governmental organizations, the Collaborative hosted a series of webinars to explore key RPS-related issues, evaluate RPS program experiences and lessons learned, and develop recommendations to support RPS program success. An RPS National Summit of stakeholders was held in November, 2008 to advance the Collaborative’s work and recommendations. One specific goal of the Collaborative has been to identify a set of recommended principles and best practices emerging from state experiences that can assist legislators and regulators as they develop new RPS initiatives or revise existing programs. The Steering Committee, with input from Collaborative participants and the National RPS Summit, has developed the following Recommended Principles and Best Practices for effective state RPS program deployment.