Legislative goals are necessarily broad, such as requirements for carbon footprint reduction by a certain date.

However, legislative goals should also be achievable, and ideally should facilitate the achievement of other goals.

Energy legislation drives changes in energy technology by affecting market decisions – e.g., how electricity is generated and distributed; whether renewable electricity and fuels are economic.  Energy legislation is particularly well-suited to also consider whether it can help achieve other traditional legislative goals, such as encouraging economic development. 

Energy decisions have complex inter-relationships.  While legislatures do not generally want to mandate the use of specific technologies, it can be helpful for legislatures to understand what technological options exist.  It can also be helpful for legislatures to understand what types of technical or financial assistance that can be provided through law, might be useful to help businesses, government agencies and utilities to meet new legislative goals.

Alpine Flamingo can help legislatures and legislative staffs understand any jurisdiction’s comprehensive energy picture, with special attention to helping develop legislation that may be particularly helpful to achieve the legislature’s energy and economic development goals.  We are independent and make recommendations based on client goals, not for the purpose of promoting any specific technologies.

To illustrate the value of a comprehensive analysis, some of the questions legislators and legislative staffs may want to consider are shown below.