Senate Advances Renewable Energy Bill
The Associated Press
04/01/09 - 07:11 PM EDT
DAVE GRAM
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) The Vermont Senate on Wednesday advanced a bill that would allow cities and towns to help property owners finance renewable energy and efficiency improvements.
The bill would encourage cities and towns to set up programs that would enable property owners to install wind, solar and other energy projects and repay the cost to the municipalities over 20 years.
Sen. Robert Hartwell, D-Bennington, told his colleagues that California, Colorado and Virginia had passed similar legislation and that similar bills were pending in several other states.
The idea is to establish what amounts to low-interest loans for homeowners to pay for energy improvements ranging from solar-power systems to new and more efficient boilers. If the property is sold, the balance owed would not have to be paid off as with a conventional mortgage; instead the new owner would assume the payments as would happen with property taxes, he said.
Meanwhile, a House committee neared completion of its work on a renewable energy bill with a broader set of goals.
It would make Vermont the first state in the country to set up a renewable energy "standard offer" a price its utilities would be required to pay for power sent to the grid by small-scale generators. Those could include wind- and solar-power installations, projects that generate power by gases collected from landfills or farm manure, geothermal systems and others.
The bill calls for wind-power developers to get 20 cents per kilowatt-hour for the power they send to the grid; solar-power developers would get 25 cents. Lawmakers said the disparity was due to the differences in costs faced by those setting up the systems.
An official with the state's largest power company Brian Keefe of Central Vermont Public Service Corp., said he remained concerned about how the legislation would affect customers, due to the relatively high cost of the power. By comparison, the company currently pays 4.2 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity from the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.
Backers of the bill said the renewable prices could be adjusted later by state regulators; they justified the levels set in the bill by saying they want to set up an incentive for renewable power development.
The House bill contains several other provisions, among them:
Encouraging the development of wind power sites on state-owned land, something the administration of Gov. Jim Douglas has resisted;
Exempting large industrial companies with their own aggressive energy efficiency programs from chipping in for the state-backed program Efficiency Vermont.
