REWIRING THE U.S. FOR ECONOMIC RECOVERY

The policy brief argues that the U.S. can achieve 90 percent zero-carbon electricity by 2035 through a federal clean energy standard and complementary reforms in tax credits, manufacturing, transmission planning, and wholesale market design. This transition would require significant scaling of solar, wind, and battery storage, while retiring the coal fleet and utilizing existing gas plants only for flexibility. The authors emphasize the need for a 'just transition' for coal-dependent communities and the modernization of utility regulation through performance-based models and all-source procurement to ensure the transition is affordable and equitable.

• The U.S. could reach 90 percent zero-carbon electricity by 2035, which would reduce economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 27 percent by that date and avoid at least $1.2 trillion in cumulative health and environmental damages.
• Achieving a 90 percent clean energy target would require an investment of approximately $1.7 trillion over 15 years and support about 530,000 additional jobs annually.
• To meet the 2035 goal, the U.S. must double annual solar and wind deployments through the 2020s and triple historical maximums in the 2030s, while growing storage deployment by 25 percent annually from 523 MW in 2019 to 20,000 MW by 2035.
• The proposed transition involves the complete retirement of the U.S. coal fleet by 2035 and requires no new natural gas plants; existing gas capacity would be maintained but run infrequently, providing 70 percent less energy than current levels.
• A federal clean electricity standard is recommended with targets of 55 percent clean by 2025, 75 percent by 2030, 90 percent by 2035, and 100 percent by 2045.
• To address stranded assets, the document suggests using government-backed or ratepayer-backed bonds to securitize the undepreciated book value of retired coal plants, noting that over $200 billion is owed to monopoly utilities for these assets.
• The transition would require significant land use: 515 GW of ground-mounted solar would occupy 13,200 square kilometers, and 596 GW of wind would occupy about 15,000 square kilometers of land (though sited on 149,000 square kilometers of farmland).
• Current interconnection rules are a barrier to deployment, with 544 GW of renewable generation currently waiting in queues, representing nearly half of the capacity needed for the 90 percent clean energy standard.
• A just transition for coal communities should include stopgap funding for municipal tax bases, shoring up the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund (currently $6 billion in debt) and the Pension Benefits Corporation, and providing job retraining.
• Wholesale market reforms are necessary to reward flexibility and remove barriers for zero-carbon resources, including eliminating dependence on capacity markets and requiring all generators and imports to participate in economic dispatch.
• Utility regulation should shift toward performance-based regulation (PBR) to tie profits to outcomes like affordability and decarbonization, and adopt competitive all-source procurement to ensure the least-cost clean energy solutions.

APA

AGGARWAL, S., & O’BOYLE, M. (2020). REWIRING THE U.S. FOR ECONOMIC RECOVERY. Energy Innovation. https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/90-Clean-By-2035-Policy-Memo-2.pdf

Chicago

AGGARWAL, SONIA, and MIKE O’BOYLE. REWIRING THE U.S. FOR ECONOMIC RECOVERY. Energy Innovation, 2020. https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/90-Clean-By-2035-Policy-Memo-2.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=AGGARWAL |first1=SONIA |last2=O’BOYLE |first2=MIKE |title=REWIRING THE U.S. FOR ECONOMIC RECOVERY |publisher=Energy Innovation |date=June 2020 |url=https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/90-Clean-By-2035-Policy-Memo-2.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{aggarwal2020rewiring, author = {AGGARWAL, SONIA and O’BOYLE, MIKE}, title = {{REWIRING THE U.S. FOR ECONOMIC RECOVERY}}, institution = {Energy Innovation}, year = {2020}, month = jun, url = {https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/90-Clean-By-2035-Policy-Memo-2.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }