Renewable Energy for State Renewable Portfolio Standards Yielded Sizable Benefits

It’s not just the planet that benefits from reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that intensify global warming.

Going green by switching to renewable sources of electricity could be good business for the US, according to new research.

A report by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California says that cutting greenhouse gas emissions meant that the US as a whole was $2.2 billion better off in 2013.

And as a result of reductions in other forms of air pollution associated with burning coal, diesel and oil, in accordance with legislation known as state renewable portfolio standards (RPS), the US was perhaps $5.2 billion the richer.

The RPS are state impositions on utility companies, requiring them to generate a proportion of their electricity from sources that do not burn fossil fuels and thus stoke global warming by emitting the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.

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