Energy Efficiency Sails and Struggles in the Legislature
Posted on April 28, 2015 by Jeff Bissonnette
Tags, Energy
CUB is working on two main bills focused on energy efficiency this session. HB 2946 was a bill targeted at making sure that large energy users paid their fair share for energy efficiency investments. Currently, the amount that industrial customers pay for the cheapest resource is capped, and that cap will prevent the state for getting all the energy efficiency it could from the industrial sector. This raises rates for everyone. HB 2946 had a hearing in the House Energy and Environment Committee in March and many industrial customers testified in opposition to the bill. CUB and the NW Energy Coalition were the main proponents in the hearing. We had hoped that a process at the Oregon Public Utility Commission (PUC) would be moving a bit faster to find a solution and HB 2946 would have been used as a vehicle for the solution. But there is no solution yet, so the bill died when it did not get out of committee by the first legislative deadline.
The issue, however, is certainly not dead. CUB just submitted comments in the PUC docket (which you can read here). We will continue to push for a solution so that Oregonians can use and benefit from all of the energy efficiency resource that is available.
The second bill, Senate Bill 20, seeks to make a technical correction to a bill CUB helped pass last session for appliance efficiency standards. Those standards are highly technical, and the fact that SB 20 is even needed underscores that perhaps setting those standards might be better done in an administrative process at the Oregon Department of Energy rather than by the legislature. Several legislators agree, and we are working to potentially add language to SB 20 to give ODOE the authority to adopt new appliance efficiency standards. The bill has already been through the Senate and will have a hearing in the House Energy and Environment Committee soon. We’re hopeful about making progress on the issue.
The legislature is just reaching its halfway point. There’s a lot more work to do on these bills and others.
Stay tuned for more reports from Salem!
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04/28/17 | 0 Comments | Energy Efficiency Sails and Struggles in the Legislature