Status (overview) of bill:https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2016R1/Measures/Overview/HB4036
PERSONAL CHOICE: Utilities can usually pass prudently incurred costs to ratepayers limiting them to a 10% profit. This bill has significant incentives to build solar and wind powered generation capacity without the prudent cost standard and removes approval of PUC allowing the pass-through of costs to their ratepayers plus their allowable profit margin.
The bill would force consumer owned utilities, like public utility districts and municipal utility districts, to pay enormous new costs in the event that they took a single ratepayer from a utility holding rate payers hostage and dooming utility districts.
It also encourages electric companies to build charging locations for vehicles, including trains and boats, and recovering the costs from ratepayers without input or recourse from the ratepayers, then donating the facilities to the owners of the properties they are located on when the facilities are fully depreciated.
FREE MARKET: Investment-owned Utilities propose this bill to counter Initiative Petition 63.
FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY: Bill reverses the energy production tax credit, the most common is the federal credit of two cents per kilowatt hour. The bill allows utilities to shift the cost to ratepayers.Utilities are a monopoly with our protection from PUC. This bill removes our protection and gives free reign to the monopolies making it expensive for customers.
LIMITED GOVERNMENT: PUC indicates it eliminates their ability to maintain control of a reliability power grid that is unstable from intermittent wind and solar resources.
Fails to reduce overall greenhouse gas emission even though it serves to help meet goals. Facts show that complete depopulation of Oregon would not result in a measurable change in global greenhouse gas emissions.
The coal-fired plant in Boardman, Oregon, is already scheduled to close.
The bill also negates other decisions that PUC made through extensive public processes. This bill takes away the public’s voice.
Oregonian article: http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/02/state_utility_regulators_were.html
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Citizens Utility Board, played a central role in opposing Coal, LNG and Fossil Fueld,, I can only ask why the CUB Chair Dan Jaynes is the Director of Meteorology at Iberdrola Renewables, one of the largest recieptant of renewable subsidies, is this not a conflict of interest and illegal as noted below.
“A member who is employed by a utility is not eligible for appointment or election to the Citizens Utility Board of Governors, and a member of the Citizens Utility Board of Governors who obtains employment by a utility may not maintain a position on the Citizens Utility Board of Governors.” http://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/774.070
I expect the Oregon PUC to include water generating power as being,the ultimate renewable, non-poluting resource. Wind is not a reliable source of power and the sun only produces power during the day. This means we have to rely on water flowing though a trubine turning a generator as a back-up for both wind and sun.