States continue to develop their own renewable portfolio standards (RPSs) regulating the increased use of renewable energy sources.

This month, Florida joined about two dozen other states when its Public Service Commission recommended that electric utilities be required to provide 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2041.

With these RPSs, the requisite percent and deadlines vary from state to state. Some are voluntary; others are mandatory with very aggressive deadlines. The net result is that utilities across the country are looking for sources of renewable energy to sell to their customers. And in many cases, they are making agreements to buy energy from existing sources.

This is fine for the short-term. But the RPS approach might be shortsighted and misguided. That is the opinion of MIT researcher Michael Hogan. A recent New Scientist blog noted that “these short-term requirements promote terrestrial wind farms, a mature technology, at the exclusion of less mature technologies such as solar, offshore wind, and geothermal approaches.” 

Additionally, as utilities meet their RPS goals using mature technology, it certainly cannot help the development of more exotic (and possibly more useful) renewable sources including those based on tidal and solar-to-hydrogen technologies.

Technology leaders are calling on the government to substantially increase its investment in the development of new energy sources. But such requests will likely fall on deaf ears if utilities can meet their RPS mandates using existing technology.