Steve Green voted Nay (Passage) on this Legislation.
Title: Establishes Updates and Expansions to the State's Energy Conservation Programs
Signed by Governor Tim Walz
Title: Establishes Updates and Expansions to the State's Energy Conservation Programs
Title: Establishes Updates and Expansions to the State's Energy Conservation Programs
Title: Establishes Updates and Expansions to the State's Energy Conservation Programs
Title: Establishes Updates and Expansions to the State's Energy Conservation Programs
Vote to pass a bill that establishes expansions of the state's energy conservation programs to extend to electrification measures and save money.
Classifies "innovative clean technology" as advanced energy technology that is (Sec. 2.a):
Environmentally superior to technologies currently in use;
Expected to offer energy-related, environmental, or economic benefits; and
Not widely deployed by the utility industry.
Authorizes a public utility to petition the commission for authorization to invest in a project or projects to deploy one or more innovative clean technologies to further the development, commercialization, and deployment of innovative clean technologies that benefit the public utility's customers (Sec. 2.b).
Alleges optimizing the timing and method used by energy consumers to manage energy use provides significant benefits to the consumers and to the utility system as a whole (Sec. 3.a).
Authorizes the balance of energy savings toward the annual energy-savings goal may be achieved only by the following consumer-owned utility activities (Sec. 5-2):
Energy savings from additional energy conservation improvements;
Electric utility infrastructure projects that result in increased efficiency greater than would have occurred through normal maintenance activity;
Net energy savings from efficient fuel-switching improvements that meet the criteria; or
Subject to department approval, demand-side natural gas or electric energy displaced by use of waste heat recovered and used as thermal energy, including the recovered thermal energy from a cogeneration or combined heat and power facility.
Requires a multiyear plan that does not, in each year of the plan, meet both the minimum energy savings goal from energy conservation improvements and the total energy savings goal of 1.5 percent, or lower goals adjusted by the commissioner to (Sec. 5-3.b):
State why each goal is projected to be unmet; and
Demonstrate how the consumer-owned utility proposes to meet both goals on an average basis over the duration of the plan.
Requires the energy conservation and optimization plan of a consumer-owned utility to include activities to improve energy efficiency in the public schools served by the utility. These activities may include programs to (Sec. 5-3.j):
Increase the efficiency of the school's lighting and heating and cooling systems;
Recommission buildings;
Train building operators; and
Provide opportunities to educate students, teachers, and staff regarding energy efficiency measures implemented at the school.
Authorizes a public utility to file annually, or the Public Utilities Commission may require the public utility to file, and the commission may approve, rate schedules containing provisions for the automatic adjustment of charges for utility service in direct relation to changes in the expenses of the public utility for real and personal property taxes, fees, and permits, the amounts of which the public utility cannot control (Sec. 12.b).
Requires the commissioner to develop and establish guidelines to determine the eligibility of multifamily buildings to participate in low-income energy conservation programs (Sec. 15.e).
Title: Establishes Updates and Expansions to the State's Energy Conservation Programs