Article by Erik Smith. Published on Wednesday, February 01, 2012 EST.

House and Senate Committee Chairs Give Up on ‘Big Bill’ to Modify Green-Energy Mandate

Senate Energy Chairman Kevin Ranker and House Environment Chairman Dave Upthegrove.

By Krista Norsworthy

Staff Writer/ Washington Wire

OLYMPIA, Feb. 1 – House and Senate committee chairs are throwing in the towel on a big rewrite of Initiative 937, the measure that requires utilities to purchase costly wind and solar power they say they don’t need – but don’t count this one out. Modifications to at least a few of those stringent purchasing requirements still may reemerge later in the session.

            The big rewrite never quite jelled, said Dave Upthegrove, D-Des Moines, chairman of the House Environment Committee. “Some of the largest and most controversial issues never came together in a final bill to move,” he said. On Tuesday, the House measure was a casualty of the cutoff deadline for policy bills. Upthegrove didn’t bring it up for a vote.

The proposal was unveiled last week by Upthegrove and Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island, chairman of the Senate Energy, Natural Resources and Marine Waters Committee. It hit at the central complaint raised by many utilities about the 2006 measure – that it imposes stringent purchasing requirements at a time when electricity demand has flatlined. The state’s largest utilities are supposed to supply customers with an increasing share of their power from “renewable” energy sources, 15 percent by 2020. But because demand hasn’t increased, what it means is that utilities have to purchase power they don’t need, and consumers and businesses will have to pick up the tab in the form of higher electric bills.

The Upthegrove and Ranker proposal, contained in HB 2654 and SB 6396, would have allowed utilities to meet the requirement as demand increases in the future, and it offered environmental interests a trade-off. Eventually the standard would be increased to 20 percent. The proposal also offered a number of other smaller-scale changes to the purchasing requirements, including provisions that would credit the wood-products industry for investments in biomass made before 1999.

 Despite a last-minute attempt at a rewrite by the governor’s office, the measure ran into strong opposition from environmental groups and interests that stand to benefit if the rules remain in place, including the windpower industry and utilities that have spent heavily to build their own wind farms. 

            Few Interested in Compromise

To hear Upthegrove tell the story, when the proposal got its first hearings last week in the House and Senate, virtually every interest with a stake in the debate showed up to give it a good ripping.

“I think the people with a financial stake in these decisions have been unable and unwilling to move from their traditionally held positions,” Upthegrove said.

So the big bill appears dead, and Upthegrove and Ranker say it is one of those issues lawmakers will have to ponder after the Legislature adjourns for the year, during the interim between sessions. It should be noted, however, that lawmakers and the competing interests have been trying to work out an agreement for years, without success. And of course, nothing is ever really dead in the Legislature – lawmakers can always find a way to bring big proposals back to life.

However, some small pieces of the big proposal remain among the living. Tuesday afternoon Ranker introduced a set of four smaller-scale bills – the “low-hanging fruit” of the proposal, as Ranker describes it. Ranker said he remains hopeful at least something will go through.

“I may very well wake up this week and realize that even that low hanging fruit turns out to be hand grenades,” Ranker said.

The bills are scheduled for a vote Thursday afternoon in the Senate Energy Committee, the final hearing of the panel before a cutoff deadline for policy bills in the Senate.

            Small-Scale Bill Passes House Committee

One smaller-scale proposal made it through the House committee Tuesday, the final day for policy bills in the House. House Bill 2456 would information available for potential investors in public utility projects as to whether the projects qualify as renewable. As the law stands, only private utility information is made available by the UTC. Upthegrove said the current lack of certainty may deter investors from putting money down on public renewable energy projects.

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