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North Carolina House committee kills anti-renewables bill
Credit: N.C. House committee kills anti-renewables bill | John Downey, Senior Staff Writer | Charlotte Business Journal | Apr 23, 2015 | www.bizjournals.com ~~
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An N.C. House committee has killed the latest effort to curtail the state’s renewable-energy requirements.
The state’s renewable-energy portfolio standard requires utilities in North Carolina to produce a specific percentage of the power they sell from renewable sources or energy efficiency.
The current requirement is that 6 percent of sales involve energy from renewable sources. That will rise in two stages to 12.5 percent by 2021.
The N.C. Energy Ratepayers Protection Act was introduced last week to significantly cut the renewables requirements. It also proposed drastically reducing the size of renewable projects that qualify for standard contracts to sell power to state utilities.
That same proposal had been rejected by the N.C. Utilities Commission earlier this year after solar power developers said the measure would gut their industry.
Committee vote
The House Public Utilities Committee voted down the Ratepayers Protection Act by a 16-14 vote Wednesday afternoon. Five Republicans and all 11 of the committees Democrats voted against the bill proposed by Rep. Mike Hager (R-Rutherford) and two fellow Republicans.
The defeat came after the bill’s supporters softened a key provision of the legislation in an attempt to get more support.
The original bill called for ending renewable-energy requirements in 2018. The new version, adopted as a committee substitute by a voice vote at the opening of the meeting, called for freezing the requirement at the current 6 percent, but did not call for ending the requirement.
But even with that concession, the bill was defeated.
This is the second time the House has killed a bill sponsored by Hager to gut the renewable-energy requirements.
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