id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
cjel-3502	Monast, Jonas J.; Adair, Sarah K.	A Triple Bottom Line for Electric Utility Regulation: Aligning State-Level Energy, Environmental, and Consumer Protection Goals	2013	60	.pdf	application/pdf	25905	1337	44	4 COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAW [Vol. 38:1 aligning state energy, environmental, and consumer protection goals within the current regulatory system, and proposes a “triple bottom line” (“TBL”) approach to state utility regulation to achieve this alignment.8 The original TBL concept encourages businesses and governments to measure value by considering environmental and social dimensions in addition to fiscal considerations.9 By comparison, the TBL approach for electric utility regulation proposed here aims to harmonize existing state policy goals of ensuring: (1) affordable electricity; (2) reliable electricity; and (3) protection of public health and the environment.10 Specifically, it allows officials across state governments to consider how their roles affect all three TBL pillars, thereby enabling informed decision making and comprehensive problem solving to improve outcomes across all three goals. In some instances, state utility regulation may lead utilities to construct facilities that emit higher levels of pollution in order to maintain relatively lower electricity prices, ignoring, for example, the possibility that more stringent air pollution rules in the future may encourage reliance on electricity from conventional pulverized coal plants over a nuclear plant or a wind farm with a natural gas plant as backup.12 This decision could make air pollution problems more acute, conflicting with environmental goals and potentially leading to calls for more stringent pollution controls.	cache/cjel-3502.pdf	txt/cjel-3502.txt