Last week, the leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee released an overview of the Climate Leadership and Environmental Action for our Nation’s (CLEAN) Future Act, a forthcoming bill to put the United States on a path to reduce carbon emissions.

At the heart of the bill is a requirement for electricity providers to increase the portion of their power that comes from clean sources, including nuclear energy, and to reach 100 percent clean by 2050. The bill builds upon the commitments that states and companies have been making to significantly reduce carbon emissions.

Prior to 2017, 28 states enacted some form of legally binding requirement to deploy clean electricity. A typical state target would require 20 percent of the state’s electricity to come from clean sources. Only two of those 28 states adopted technology-inclusive policies that would allow carbon-free nuclear energy to meet the goal.

Now, states have clearly changed their perspective. In the last three years, 13 states have created or updated their standards and they tend to be much more ambitious and inclusive. The majority of these call for 100 percent clean electricity and the majority are technology-neutral, which will allow nuclear to be part of the generating portfolio to meet these goals.

Analysts at the think tank Third Way created a tool that tracks who is making commitments to reduce emissions in the U.S. They have an online calculator that allows you to see the targets set by states, cities and companies to reduce emissions. It paints an interesting picture of how this landscape has changed in recent years: it’s not just state governments that are acting.

The map that Third Way shows makes it clear that utilities are charting a path to carbon reductions. Twenty-eight electric sector companies have publicly put forward targets for their generating portfolios. This is a meaningful segment of the power sector with companies including American Electric Power Co., Duke Energy Corp., DTE Energy, Xcel Energy Inc., Southern Co. and NRG Energy Inc., among others.

Their targets are ambitious. Almost all call for something like 80 percent carbon reductions or even 100 percent clean electricity. With this ambition comes a recognition that nuclear needs to be among the tools available to meet these goals. Of the 14 commitments made in 2019, 12 were technology-inclusive.

This trend is very important. Carbon reduction policies must be defined to include nuclear energy as part of the available solutions. Nuclear energy makes up more than 55 percent of carbon-free energy in the U.S., making it a key component of any plan to reduce carbon emissions. Including nuclear will also help to reduce costs and maintain reliability as emissions are reduced.

In 2020, we can expect to see a great deal of attention on policy proposals to reduce carbon emissions. States and utilities have already begun to map out where we need to go and including nuclear as part of the solution will help to get us there.