Advanced Energy Perspectives

The Sunshine State is finally living up to its nickname. In early May, both chambers of the Florida legislature passed SB 90, the implementing legislation for Amendment 4. With Florida state government currently tied up in budget deliberations, SB 90 has not yet been delivered to Gov. Rick Scott. Once it has been, he will have 15 days to sign the bill or let it become law without his signature. With the mechanics for implementation nailed down, the constitutional amendment will extend important property tax exemptions for renewable energy installations, including solar, on both commercial and residential properties. Florida has long been a sleeping giant for the solar industry. Although it ranks third nationally in solar potential, the state is currently 15^th in installed capacity. With passage of SB 90, Amendment 4 will fulfill its promise – and open up the market for solar in Florida, which is poised for takeoff.

California has longstanding vehicle electrification goals in place. The state is actively implementing its ambitious Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate and is hoping to reach Gov. Brown’s goal of 1.5 million ZEVs on the road by 2025. While more Californians are choosing cleaner, more fuel-efficient vehicles, challenges remain. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) estimates that by 2030, 5 million vehicles will need to be on the road to reach the state’s greenhouse gas emission (GHG) reduction goals. Although leading nationally with at least 225,000 electric vehicles (EVs) now on the road, California falls woefully short in trajectory to meet its target. To address this challenge, AEE is co-sponsoring AB 1184, a bill authored by Assemblymember Phil Ting, which would create the California Electric Vehicle Initiative (CEVI). Modeled on the successful California Solar Initiative, which brought the solar industry to cost-competitive scale in the Golden State, CEVI aims to simultaneously tackle three critical elements of the transportation electrification equation: customer adoption, stable long-term funding, and build-out of charging infrastructure.

If you’re a regular reader of Advanced Energy Perspectives then you know that we’ve written several times on New York’s groundbreaking Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) proceeding. We’ve also written about rate design and efforts around the country to address net energy metering (NEM). Some NEM reform efforts are better than others. In some cases, utilities have been seeking to raise fixed charges on NEM customers or to impose per-kW monthly demand fees, arguing that NEM customers are not paying their fair share of the costs of the grid. These charges reduce the attractiveness of onsite distributed generation (DG) by shifting utility revenue collection from volumetric charges (per kWh) to monthly charges that cannot be reduced with onsite generation. In our view, such approaches are overly focused on maintaining certainty of revenue for utilities, and as a result fail to adequately consider the value of DG to the grid, such as deferring or avoiding future investments in generation, transmission, and distribution assets.

New York, under its Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) process, is taking a different approach. In its recent order on the Value of Distributed Energy Resources (DER), New York’s Public Service Commission (PSC) put forth an innovative structure for valuing the benefits of electricity from DG that is exported to the grid (and which, under traditional NEM, would be credited at the retail rate). But the order also revealed some problematic features of New York’s treatment of onsite renewable energy generation and the value of its environmental attributes – features worth revisiting as the Value of DER proceeding continues.

In the final days of Maryland’s legislative session, a bill to extend the state’s successful energy efficiency program – known as EmPOWER Maryland – through 2023 became law. With AEE and other efficiency advocates persuading Gov. Hogan not to veto the bill, which had passed the legislature with veto-proof majorities in both houses, the law took effect without his signature, but also with no need for an override vote. The result: an estimated $1.6 billion market opportunity for energy efficiency companies across Maryland unleashed over the next six years.

Pennsylvania’s landmark energy efficiency law – known as Act 129 – continues to deliver huge electricity savings for the Commonwealth’s residents and businesses. In its most recent report on Act 129, the Public Utility Commission’s (PUC) Statewide Evaluator found that residential, commercial, and industrial consumers saved $2.2 billion in the last three years alone. So why the repeated – and so far failed – attempts to jam through legislation that would cripple the Keystone State’s energy efficiency efforts?