Legislature Finally Gets Out of Dodge – Er, Salem

Reflecting back on the 2015 Oregon legislative session, well, as the Grateful Dead used to sing, “what a long, strange trip it’s been.” The legislature adjourned on July 6 after a session that saw the resignation of a Governor, the inauguration of Oregon’s second female Governor and a whole lot of ups and downs.

CUB entered the session with a five-point agenda:

1. Climate – includes coal-to-clean, assisting with the extension of the Clean Fuels Standard and monitoring anything else that comes up related to climate change and attending regulation.
2. Energy Efficiency – includes continuing efforts to ensure that industrial customers pay their fair share for energy efficiency investments.
3. Public Purpose Defense – includes making sure that there is no diversion of public purpose funds away from their stated purpose.
4. Appliance Standards – establish new standards for appliances that have received standards in California and proposing to authorize the Oregon Department of Energy to adopt new standards administratively rather than having to go through the legislature.
5. Renewable Energy – support efforts to rebuild a taxpayer incentive program for renewable energy, including support for ODOE’s effort to extend the Residential Energy Tax Credit (RETC) from its current sunset in 2018 to 2022. We also pursued a bill to increase incentives for solar water heating systems.

Here’s what’s happened in each area:

Climate: Our main bill in this area was the “Coal-to-Clean” bills (HB 2729; SB 477). We pushed hard, along with a broad range of organizations, to move them along but as the end of the session neared it became clear that the needed votes were not there. We are currently exploring how to sustain the focus on eliminating coal.

There was a very serious threat to the newly-adopted Clean Fuels Standard. As part of negotiating a transportation package, there was a tacit agreement by some legislators that a repeal of the Clean Fuels law could be an active consideration. However, the agreement needed to include greenhouse gas emissions reductions equal to or greater than those projected under the Clean Fuels law. This included a diversion of public purpose dollars to invest in electric vehicle infrastructure (again, more on that later).

The momentum behind the package faltered when it became apparent that the emissions reduction projections of the “replacement package” for Clean Fuels didn’t hold up. The whole effort collapsed and Clean Fuels will be left untouched for now – but opponents have filed ballot language to eliminate or weaken it so the battle will continue.

Energy Efficiency: Our main issue in this area was to address the imbalance that currently exists with the industrial customers’ investment in energy efficiency as described above. The bill that served as the vehicle for the issue was HB 2946. While that bill died after a hearing, there is now an active docket at the Public Utility Commission around which discussions are happening to create a legislative fix for the issue.

Defense of Public Purpose Charges: As noted above, public purpose charges came under fire quickly in connection with the transportation package. The proposal was to divert the entirety of the funds dedicated to schools for energy efficiency and about 45 percent of the funds dedicated to renewable energy development (through the Energy Trust of Oregon) in order to fund “electric vehicle infrastructure.”

The utilities had assisted the legislators negotiating the transportation package by providing estimates for emissions reductions based on providing incentives for electric vehicle purchases (not a good use of ratepayer dollars, by the way). But negotiators chose not to go that direction and were only going to provide funding for charging stations (which doesn’t lead directly to emissions reductions) but the reduction projections weren’t changed. We began a strong grassroots outreach effort to underscore that the reduction projections did not take into account how much emissions would actually increase by removing dollars from efficiency and renewables. Those concerns along with doubts about other parts of the emissions reduction package eventually doomed the transportation package.

Appliance Standards: As reported last month, we’ll be petitioning the Oregon Department of Energy to adopt standards for appliances that have been adopted in California but not yet in Oregon based on existing statute language. So we’ll be moving this discussion to an administrative setting rather than a legislative one soon.

Renewable Energy: Our biggest focus in this area was bringing state incentives for solar hot water systems on par with the incentives for solar electric systems. The language from our original bill (HB 3344) was included in an omnibus tax credit bill, HB 2171, which was passed by the legislature. It was one of the last bills approved by the Senate before they adjourned on July 6. It is currently awaiting Governor Brown’s signature and all indications from her staff are that she will sign it. She has until mid-August to do that.

The other solar bills that we were supporting at the end included HB 3492, which would establish a property tax exemption for large-scale solar systems. This bill did pass. Another bill was HB 2632 which sought to create a new incentive for large solar systems. That bill got stuck in Ways and Means. Finally, HB 2941 started out as a “community solar” bill, but ended up as a bill that simply gives permission for utilities to have a solar product in their portfolio of voluntary options, and now also requires some additional study of solar issues by the PUC. That bill is currently on the Governor’s desk.

After each legislative session, we thank our members for supporting CUB’s efforts. 2015 is no exception.

Thank you, thank you. Together, we know we’ll keep on Truckin’.

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