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4/19/2010
Rep. Montgomery: Stubborn Facts about the Rewritten Global Warming Bill
On Tuesday afternoon, after two months of secret negotiations and back-room dealing, the legislative authors of Governor Doyle’s Global Warming bill unveiled a 150-page amended version. While the mainstream media referred to it as a “scaled-down” version, it was anything but scaled-down. The rewritten version still includes the $15 billion renewable energy mandate and $10.5 billion in new energy efficiency taxes that will be paid for by utility customers on their monthly electric bill. The net effect of these expensive regulations and higher taxes remains the same – fewer good-paying jobs for Wisconsin workers perhaps more than 43,000 according to trained economists at the Boston-based Beacon Hill Institute.
Within hours of the introduction of this 150-page rewritten bill, the Co-Chairs of the Assembly Special Committee on Clean Energy Jobs, State Representatives Spencer Black (D-Madison) and Jim Soletski (D-Green Bay), scheduled it for executive action by the full committee. By 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, the rewritten version was approved on a 6-3 party line vote with the Assembly Democrats backing the proposal -- proving once again that the Democrat-led Assembly is willing to jettison deliberative public debate if such action gets in the way of passing their own partisan agenda. At this time, no further action on the rewritten Global Warming legislation has been scheduled. Committee Co-Chair Black indicated that he and other Assembly Democrat leaders would wait until after the Senate Special Committee on Clean Energy Jobs and the legislature’s Joint Finance Committee act on the bill before deciding whether to bring it to a vote by the full Assembly.
The limited time available for review of this rewritten version of Governor Doyle’s Global Warming bill left me and my two Assembly Republican colleagues on the committee scrambling to prepare for the committee debate. In fact, it took until 9:00 a.m. on Thursday morning to even get a non-partisan analysis of the proposal by the Wisconsin Legislative Council. During the debate, we chose to focus on the facts. A point that was not lost on Committee Co-Chair Black who chose to respond to our recitation of the facts with a phrase that is quite popular among Democrat officials these days – “you are entitled to your opinion, but not your own facts.” While the Democrat committee members didn’t want to listen to the facts about the rewritten version of Governor Doyle’s Global Warming bill, the fact need to get out. Here are just a few that I hope you will keep in mind, if, or when, this bill comes up again for a vote in the Wisconsin State Legislature:
- A survey of Wisconsin electric utilities confirms the proposal’s new mandate that 25% of Wisconsin’s energy be derived from renewable resources by 2025 will require them to spend approximately $15 billion over the next 15 years – a portion of those costs will be paid for by utility customers.
- The proposal’s 2% electricity consumption standard will increase energy efficiency taxes on customer’s monthly utility bills from $90 million a year to more than $700 million annually.
- 38 separate organizations representing Wisconsin manufacturers, farmers, builders, contractors, retailers, food processors, papermakers, automobile dealers, trucking firms, utility customer and economic development professionals oppose the amended version of Governor Doyle’s Global Warming legislation.
- In our neighboring states of Iowa and Minnesota, utility companies are requesting double-digit increases in customer electric rates to recover their costs for complying with their state’s renewable energy mandates.
- According to the United States Energy Information Center in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available, Wisconsin’s residential customer electric rates were the highest in the Midwest and its industrial customer electric rates were second highest in the Midwest.
- An independent, non-partisan cost-benefit analysis has never been done on either the original or the rewritten version of Governor Doyle’s Global Warming legislation.
And last, but not least, a word search of the 150-page rewritten version of Governor Doyle’s Global Warming reveals that the term “job creation” comes up only once, but the terms “greenhouse gas” or “greenhouse gases” are mentioned a total of 114 times. Remember that the next time you hear Governor Doyle or his allies refer to this bill as the “Clean Energy Jobs Act.”
Rep. Montgomery is a Republican and represents the residents of the 4th Assembly District (Green Bay).
COMMENTS
Legislators Fire Duds at Clean Energy Jobs Act by Michael Vickerman, Executive Director, RENEW Wisconsin
In an April 13 statement, Reps. Mike Huebsch (R-West Salem), Phil Montgomery (R-Green Bay), and Scott Gunderson (R-Waterford) contend that the substitute amendment for the Clean Energy Jobs Act, released earlier this week, will drive up electric rates across Wisconsin. As ammunition for their argument, the representatives point to recent requests in Iowa to raise electric rates, which they attribute to the state’s renewable energy policy.
The argument advanced by these three lawmakers is truly absurd, given the facts of the situation. In the first place, Iowa’s Alternative Energy Production (AEP) law, which dates from 1983, requires the state’s two largest electric utilities to add a mere 105 megawatts (MW) of generating capacity between them. By 1997, both utilities had achieved full compliance with that law. That mandate has not been increased or modified since that time.
Fast forward to April 2010. Windpower capacity alone in Iowa now totals 3,670 MW, and the Hawkeye State is now the second largest producer of wind-generated electricity in the nation behind Texas. According to the Iowa Policy Project, windpower accounted for 14% of the state’s electric output in 2009. Additional information on windpower development in Iowa can be accessed here.
The vast majority of Iowa’s windpower capacity was built for reasons other than complying with the state’s renewable energy policy. Iowa utilities invested in windpower because it is the lowest cost generation option available to them. Here’s what MidAmerican Energy Company, Iowa’s largest investor-owned utility, says about its windpower assets.
MidAmerican began building wind turbines in 2004 and has made the investment without raising customers’ electric rates. The price of electricity per kilowatt-hour … for MidAmerican customers is lower today than it was in 1995, and the company has committed to not seek an electric rate increase to become effective until 2014, which is nearly 20 years without a rate increase.
Given MidAmerican’s experience with windpower, it is clear that the allegation from Reps. Huebsch, Montgomery and Gunderson was spun without any apparent connection to reality. The proper place to file a claim this ludicrous is in a manure digester, where it can be broken down into usable energy.
Continued -- http://renewwisconsinblog.org/2010/04/15/legislators-fire-blanks-at-clean-energy-jobs-act/
Ed Blume (Mon Apr 19 16:56:42 2010)
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