by Wallace McMullen
At the beginning of this year’s legislative session, the outlines of what was good and what was bad were fairly clear among the bills which had been introduced.
Good:
1. HB 766 sponsored by Joan Bray. Required a small amount of renewable energy use for generation (7.5%) by electric utilities by 2015, uniform labeling that facilitates comparison shopping for service by retail electric service providers, and enacts net metering* provisions.
| *So-called “net metering” legislation will allow residential homeowners to be connected to the electric grid, and also have small solar or wind generating equipment which reduces their consumption from the electric grid. It deals primarily with preventing unreasonable liability insurance costs and setting reasonable interconnection equipment standards. |
2. SB 529 sponsored by Pat Dougherty, the “Consumer Clean Energy Act,” which would enact net metering.
Bad:
SB 455 sponsored by Peter Kinder. Also known as AmerenUE’s electric restructuring bill. (A similar bill was introduced by Carol Jean Mays in the House).
This proposal would have allowed big electric utilities such as AmerenUE to divest their generating assets to third party operators (or subsidiaries) and remove the electricity generation function from the regulatory oversight of the Public Service Commission. The state would lose its authority to require its utilities to have adequate generation supplies, and would lose control over the price of the wholesale electric supplies. It also sets up retail competition for very large customers, and proposed a rate freeze for the next five years. (AmerenUE has been making good profits with the present rate structure).
Given the experience of California, one would think that the AmerenUE restructuring bill would die quietly. However, AmerenUE and its fellow utilities have many well-paid lobbyists who are hard at work on influencing legislators.
In the last week of March, a substitute bill was developed which plugged Dougherty’s “Consumer Clean Energy Act” into SB 455 and made some other changes. The “Committee Substitute” was voted out with a recommendation for passage by the Senate Commerce and Environment committee on March 29, 2001. This made things more complex.
Even in the form of the committee substitute, this is still a nasty bill, both in terms of what it will do, and in terms of what it does not do. For instance, it has no provisions for encouraging the use of renewable energy in the state. Missouri imports almost all of its energy supply, about $16 billion a year. Developing in-state renewable energy would be good for the environment and good for our economy. But that’s excluded from this bill.
It contains no provisions for encouraging better energy efficiency in our economy – neither end use efficiencies such as better air-conditioners and refrigerators, nor better generation and transmission efficiency.
It contains no provisions for assisting elderly and/or low-income people.
It does say that considerable jurisdiction will be transferred to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, (an agency which failed to assist California when asked to do so). The Public Service Commission has observed that participating in cases before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has been expensive in the past. The State agencies which would implement this legislation if it passed estimate that dealing with the matters transferred to FERC would incur annual cost increases of half a million dollars ($500,000) in their budgets.
The bill provides that without any approval by the Public Service Commission the investor owned utilities can transfer transmission facilities to any entity subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Generating assets can still be transferred under a somewhat regulated process.
The SB 455 substitute also bans participation by environmental groups or the Department of Natural Resources as intervenors in any case before the Public Service Commission that results from this bill. Only narrowly defined customers “with a direct interest” and the Office of Public Counsel will be allowed to intervene.
So why is this frightening legislation moving ahead? Well, refer to the point above about lots of utility lobbyists with big dollars behind them. Senators Wayne Goode and Pat Dougherty have usually been perceptive guardians of the public interest. But they both voted for this dubious legislation in committee. So those of us who want to avoid living in a landscape of coal slag in the future have our work cut out for us. We need to let the legislature know that we do not want this bill passed.
Reach Wallace McMullen at mcmulw@sockets.net.