Key Policies Wisconsin Needs to Expand Clean and Renewable Energy

  • Clean Energy Choice or 3rd Party Power Purchase Agreement legislation is a simple clarification of current law that would allow a third party to install, maintain, and sell power from a renewable energy system back to the those homeowners or business. 

  • Net-metering, requires all utilities buyback customer-generated renewable energy at wholesale rates and provide credit to customers that can be used at other times for excess energy produced.   Although Wisconsin is one of 43 states that have adopted net metering policies, we currently caps system size at 20 kW, and utilities vary widely in the way they calculate credits, creating uncertainty for homeowners and clean energy businesses.  

  • Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) Wisconsin’s RPS requiring utilities to get 25% by 2025.  Wisconsin has the 2nd highest electricity rates in the Midwest, despite the fact that we get over 70% of our electricity from coal and natural gas.  Wisconsin’s RES has added just 1% to the cost of the average utility bill, while generating nearly $2 billion in investments.  The cost utilities will incur serving their retail customers from now until 2025 – keeping the RPS at 10% – is $66.2 billion.  Raising the RPS to 25% would only increase costs to $67.9 billion, less than a 3% difference. Wisconsin now has the lowest RPS of all   It’s time to increase for Wisconsin to set new clean energy goals by increasing our RPS!
  • Restoring Funds for Focus on Energy and eliminating the legislative provision that caps energy efficiency investments at 1.2% of utility revenues.  If we want to regain our position as an energy efficiency leader, funding should also be attached to goals to reduce electricity and natural gas use by 2% and 1.5% per year, respectively.

Expanding renewable energy and energy efficiency in Wisconsin will keep more money within local economies, create jobs, and reduce the billions we send out of state annually to import coal, petroleum oil, and natural gas into our state.  It will also reduce electricity’s enormous contribution to climate change and make our air safer to breathe.