Transportation Bill Won’t Include Public Purpose Charge Diversion
Posted on June 13, 2017 by Janice Thompson
Tags, Energy
An extensive transportation bill is under discussion in Salem after a team of legislators spent months receiving input from across Oregon. Our friends at Oregon Environmental Council have this helpful overview of the proposed bill.
CUB supports electrifying the transportation sector, but the first draft of the transportation bill included two sections that would have diverted energy efficiency public purpose dollars to pay for electric vehicle charging stations. These were only two out of 145 sections in the bill and they may sound good on the surface, but CUB successfully lobbied that they were actually imprudent and unnecessary.
Portland General Electric and Pacific Power customers support the public purpose fund through a three percent surcharge on their bills. That money pays for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects that meet cost effectiveness criteria. These investments save ratepayers more money than their surcharge payment because these utilities do not have to purchase more expensive electricity. The customers who undertake these projects benefit, but there are also system wide benefits to all customers. For example, for every one dollar of public purpose dollars invested in energy efficiency projects, all ratepayers save three dollars.
Over the years, CUB has maintained a perfect record opposing the inappropriate diversion of public purpose dollars away from their intended use to invest in cost effective energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. Such diversions are imprudent, and so we said that again to the legislators working on the transportation bill.
The piece of the bill CUB deemed “unnecessary” is that Portland General Electric and Pacific Power are already investing in electric vehicle charging stations. With vigorous support from CUB, the 2016 Clean Electricity and Coal Transition Act, SB 1547, included a transportation electrification section requiring that these utilities propose even more infrastructure investments. Negotiations before the Oregon Public Utility Commission are already underway on those investments with CUB actively involved. By changing the rules of the game midstream, those two sections of the transportation bill would most likely lead to suspension of the current negotiations and delay those electric vehicle charging station investments.
CUB’s lobbying against these two sections of the transportation bill, along with the opposition of many partners, carried the day. CUB will be on the alert for backtracking or other problematic provisions, but unnecessary and imprudent diversion of public purpose dollars is now out of the transportation bill.
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06/13/17 | 0 Comments | Transportation Bill Won’t Include Public Purpose Charge Diversion