In a report Thursday, the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission told Ind. Gov. Mike Pence “the commission concurs with the numerous public written comments supporting the use of energy efficiency and demand-side management as an essential part of our state’s resource portfolio.”
Sounds reasonable.
The report comes at Pence’s request after Senate Bill 340 became law in the last session of the Legislature. The bill, which passed both houses of the Republican controlled Legislature by wide margins, kills the state’s two-year-old energy efficiency program at the end of the year.
At the time, Pence said he couldn’t sign the bill killing the program into law because the program was good for consumers. But neither could he veto it, because, he said, the program would be costly to energy companies, thus raising energy prices here and making the Hoosier state less competitive.
His non-action meant the bill became law without his signature.
Pence expressed disappointment that the benefits to consumers would be lost with the death of the program. He asked the Utility Regulatory Commission to come up with proposed rules that could become part of a new energy efficiency bill in next year’s session of the Legislature.
Last week’s report was the result.
And that quote in our first paragraph is self-evident, right? No one would be on the side of spending more money for electricity, right?
Then why is Kerwin Olson, who heads up the consumer and environmental watchdog group Citizens Action Coalition, so unhappy with the report?
“Wow, really disappointing comments from the commission today,” he began in an email to the H-T Thursday, following release of the report. His complaint is that the recommendations call for only voluntary energy efficiency programs developed and run by each utility, rather than by an independent agency, with no required energy reduction goals to be set.
That approach, he said, would essentially mean the state has no effective energy efficiency plan, just as it was before 2009, when the current law was passed.
That law did have goals and laid out specific methods to reduce energy usage, including light-bulb giveaways and free energy audits by utility companies. The mandate was to reduce total energy use by 2 percent over 10 years, with incremental annual reduction targets also set.
The report’s recommendations, of course, are not yet law. Pence says he will be asking the Legislature to come up with a plan to address future energy use and efficiency in the state.
We can only hope that despite the report, a new law has real teeth. We hope Pence sees the importance of energy efficiency for our future.