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| Date: | May 24, 2011 | | Contact Name: | Sandra Whalen | | Contact Phone: | 651-296-5238 | | Contact Email: | sandra.whalen@senate.mn | | For Immediate Release | |
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| REPUBLICAN LEGISLATURE PASSES ENERGY REFORM Common Sense Provisions to Lower Costs Await Governor Signature |
(ST. PAUL) – Minnesota business and residential ratepayers will see relief in the form of reduced regulation, increased supply and lower energy costs through provisions included in SF1197, the Omnibus Energy Policy bill sent to the Governor on May 24. The bill received broad bipartisan support, passing the Senate 52-13 after garnering 82 votes in the House.
“If we are to get Minnesota moving again, we need to ensure that our industries have access to reliable energy at competitive costs” said chief Senate author Julie Rosen (R-Fairmont), chair of the Senate Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications Committee. “Energy prices are a major factor to every job creator in the state and we must do everything we can to make Minnesota an economically attractive place to live and do business.”
The legislation includes regulatory relief by streamlining reporting and providing flexibility for utilities to meet state conservation goals; exempts large energy users from costly and invasive mandates that divert resources from private conservation activities already undertaken; improves the accountability and efficiency of state energy regulators as they monitor and respond to federal and regional energy regulatory activities and it eliminates the future use of the arbitrarily punitive inverted block rate design for hundreds of thousands of Minnesota natural gas customers.
Changes specific to the law include:
• Allow utilities to submit multi-year resource plans to better forecast long range system upgrades. This will also improve regulatory efficiencies by reducing the workload of the Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Energy Resources.
• Allow utilities to better protect ratepayers by more accurately recovering costs associated with material purchases necessary to meet Minnesota’s strict emissions standards.
• Provide greater flexibility to allow rural cooperatives and municipal utilities to submit conservation plans that better reflect the makeup of their customer base. This will reduce costs for these utilities, their members and their customers.
• Exempt large energy users from substantial costs of state conservation programs that fail to recognize already aggressive private conservation measures inherent to their industries. This will free up resources in the energy intensive mining, timber product, ethanol, and petroleum industries to improve competitiveness and create jobs.
• Eliminate two Department of Energy Resources offices and streamline authority to monitor and respond to the activities of the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator (MISO) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC.)
• Eliminate future use of inverted block rates as a rate design tool. Currently mandated by the PUC for Centerpoint Energy as a pilot program, inverted block rates arbitrarily punish large families and those who live in older, less efficient homes that necessarily require more natural gas to heat their homes.
• Provide 100 megawatts of reliable base load power to Minnesota customers by allowing the importation of state-of-the-art coal power from Great River Energy’s North Dakota based Spiritwood plant.
• Provide regulatory streamlining to assist in the development of hundreds of megawatts of baseload power on the Iron Range to address predicted future energy needs of the mining industry.
“There is always more work to do, but this bill is a great first step forward,” said Rosen. “Reduced regulation, lower costs and an increased supply of reliable energy sends another strong signal that we are serious about creating jobs and we are serious about and putting Minnesota back to work.”
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