Summary of Bills Relating to Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Air Quality & Water Quality

Hamilton Consulting is actively preparing for the upcoming legislative session while working on the implementation of previous legislation by state and federal agencies. Below is a summary of our past legislative concerns.

May 2010

The Wisconsin State Legislature adjourned its biennial session on April 22, 2010. Energy and environmental issues were front and center this session. The largest piece of legislation, the global warming bill (SB 450/AB 649), dominated the discussion during the last months of session. The legislation, however, ultimately failed to pass.

Although the climate change bill received most of the attention, numerous other bills were introduced, and a few notable bills eventually passed and were signed into law.

The summary below lists the various bills that dealt with climate change, energy, environment, and water quality and their final status.

Climate Change/Energy/Air Quality

AB 75 (Budget Bill – Air Permit Fees): Increases minor operating permit fees from $35.71 per ton to $300 per year for facilities with less than 80 tons per year, and $4,100 for federally enforceable state operating permits with allowable emissions greater than 80 tons per year.

• Final Status: AB 75 signed into law as 2009 Wis. Act 28.

AB 256/SB 185 (Wind Siting): Creating statewide standards through the PSC for wind sites, etc.

• Final Status: SB 185 signed into law as Act 40.

SB 273/AB 401 (Direct-Use Renewable Energy): Gives the Public Service Commission the authority to promulgate rules to allow Wisconsin utilities to use direct-use renewable energy to create renewable resource credits to meet the Act 141 RPS.  Renewable resource credits would be created based on the amount of electricity displaced by the renewable energy resources, including direct solar applications such as solar water heating and solar light pipe technology, direct-use geothermal applications and other direct-use renewable energy resources. Language was added by amendment which adds electricity generated from fuel pellets, plasma gasification and synthetic gas to count toward the RPS.

• Final Status: SB 273 signed into law as Act 406.

SB 279 (Biofuels): Financial assistance related to bioenergy feedstocks; biorefineries, conversion to biomass energy; definition of agricultural use for determining assessed value; requires strategic bioenergy assessment; study of regulatory burdens related to biofuel production facilities; etc.

• Final Status: SB 279 signed into law as Act 401.

AB 600 (Fuel Rules): Legislation introduced to streamline the fuel cost recovery process in Wisconsin; required promulgation of administrative rules. 

• Final Status: AB 600 signed into law as Act 403.

SB 479/AB 689 (Citizens Utility Board (CUB) Funds): Requires the PSC to provide $300,000 in annual grants to CUB, a utility intervenor group. The grants must be used to offset the general expenses of the corporation, including salary, benefit, rent, and utility expenses. In addition, the bill increases the appropriation to cover the grants, and changes the appropriation from an annual to a biennial appropriation.

• Final Status: AB 689 signed into law as Act 383.

SB 615/AB 857 (Transmission Technical Bill): Among other things, this bill specifies that “within the area” in ch. 196.491 (4) (c) 1 is 60’ from the centerline of an existing transmission facility. The purpose of this provision is to maximize the use of existing R.O.W. and avoid triggering a CPCN requirement, while removing any ambiguity in the statute regarding the definition of “within the area”.

• Final Status: AB 857 signed into law as Act 378.

AB 749 (Tax Credit for Equipment used to Harvest Woody Biomass): Creates an income and franchise tax credit in an amount equal to 10 percent of the amount that a taxpayer pays in a taxable year for equipment used exclusively to harvest or process woody biomass that is used as fuel or as a component of fuel.

• Final Status: AB 749 signed into law as Act 269.

AB 904/ SB 651 (“Green to Gold Program”): A Doyle initiative announced in his 2010 State of the State Address, this bill creates a Department of Commerce loan program for manufacturers to improve energy efficiency, re-tool manufacturing facilities to produce items for the green economy, establish or expand domestic clean energy manufacturing and train workers in these activities. The bill also requires prevailing wage to be applied to these activities, applies loan repayments under current programs to be re-directed to fund green to gold, in addition to federal ARRA funds, requires Focus on Energy programs to apply to green to gold programs, as well as utility-directed conservation and efficiency programs and requires utility programs to comply with green to gold program standards and coordination between PSC and Commerce.

• Final Status: SB 651 signed into law as Act 332. 

SB 450/AB 649 (Global Warming): Legislation introduced to implement the Governor’s Task Force on Global Warming. Required a 25% RPS by 2025, energy efficiency and conservation efforts resulting in 2% reductions in electric load and 1% in gas load by 2015, mandatory advanced renewable tariffs, revising the nuclear moratorium, in-state sales requirements, etc., GHG emission reductions of up to 75% by 2050, in-state RPS production requirements, truck idling restrictions, changes to the definition of biomass, lifting the 60Mw cap on hydro but with administrative restrictions, and numerous other changes.

• Final Status: Though the bill was scheduled for action in the Assembly on the second-to-last day and for the Assembly calendar on the final day, it is believed that AB 649 was at least 9 votes short of passage in the Assembly. DEAD.

AB 843 (Energy Conservation): Creates requirements regarding energy conservation standards for the construction of certain buildings, energy and environmental design standards for state buildings, structures, and facilities, energy and environmental design standards for school district facilities and other local government buildings, leasing of state buildings, structures, and facilities, standards for the construction and use of graywater systems.

• Final Status: DEAD

AB 876 (Residential Energy Efficiency): Expands the authority of political subdivisions to make residential energy efficiency improvement loans, and authorizes political subdivisions to make water efficiency improvement loans and impose special charges for the loans.

• Final Status: DEAD

AB 755 (Sustainable Jobs Act – Energy Efficiency programs): This bill creates a voluntary revolving loan program that allows utilities and municipalities to finance homeowners’ energy improvements and allows them to be repaid via installment on their property tax bills. The bill also authorizes energy utilities to capitalize wide-scale energy retrofits at Wisconsin’s commercial and industrial businesses. It requires prevailing wage standards for weatherization contractors, creates cultural competency requirements, and requires that a percentage of all of the weatherization work is done by local, unemployed or low-income workers. Utilities could earn a rate of return on energy efficiency efforts and REC’s would be created on energy saved. 

• Final Status: DEAD

AB 309 (Nuclear Waste Payments): Requires annual payments to local governments by utilities for the dry cask storage of spent nuclear fuel. 

• Final Status: DEAD

SB 340 / AB 516 (Nuclear Moratorium): Repeals two requirements in current law that prohibit PSCW from issuing a CPCN for a nuclear power plant, including that 1) a spent fuel repository with capacity for all state waste be available; and 2) that construction of a nuclear plant be economically advantageous to ratepayers.

• Final Status: DEAD

AB 88 (Biomass Definition):Would allow garbage incineration to be included in satisfying the Act 141 RPS.

• Final Status: DEAD

AB 794 (Tax Credits for Biomass): Creates a nonrefundable individual income tax credit, and a corporate income and franchise tax credit, for the purchase of a thermal biomass heating system (system) and a similar nonrefundable credit for the purchase of biomass fuel for such a system.

• Final Status: DEAD

SB 512 (DA’s Public Benefits): This legislation would repeal early, the provisions in the state budget that require utilities to collect money from ratepayers to pay District Attorney salaries. 2009 Act 28, the state budget, requires utilities to impose a new fee of about 24¢ per month. Revenue from the fee, about $9.2 million annually, pays District Attorney salaries and benefits. The fee is scheduled to sunset on June 30, 2011 but, if on June 30, 2010 the balance in the general fund exceeds the ending balance estimated by the legislature when it passed the budget, then any amount over that up to $9.2 million would be used to end the Act 28 utility surcharge early.

• Final Status: DEAD

Environmental

AB 3 (Restrictions on Sale of Phosphorus): Prohibits the sale, distribution and display of fertilizer containing phosphorus under most circumstances. Provides exceptions for starter lawns, agriculture, and cases where certified soil testing shows phosphorus deficiency.

• Final Status: AB 3 signed into law as Act 9.

SB 200/AB 299 (Mercury Products): Regulates the sale of items containing mercury, including thermometers, manometers, switches, thermostats, relays and household items, etc. to keep elemental mercury from entering the environment. Amendments were adopted which exempt utilities.

• Final Status: SB 200 signed into law as Act 44.

AB 258 (Waste oil filters and oil absorbent materials disposal): This bill, as amended, prohibits the land-filling of used oil filters and oil-absorbent materials. A coalition of members sought an amendment to exempt oil absorbent materials but the authors were unwilling to consider this change. Absorbant materials used in an oil spill will now be required to be recyclable oil absorbent material or non recyclable material will need to be landfilled out of state.

• Final Status: The bill was signed by the Governor as Act 86.

AB 138 (DNR Secretary): The bill essentially restores appointment authority of the Secretary of the Department of Natural Resources to the Natural Resources Board, rather than the Governor.

• Final Status: The Governor vetoed the bill on November 13, 2009. The Assembly attempted to override the Governor’s veto on February 23 but the motion failed. DEAD.

Water Quality

AB 75 (Budget Bill – Water Fees): Creates a new statewide annual fee of $125 for high capacity wells and fees (to be determined by rule) within Great Lakes Basin for withdrawals exceeding 50 million gallons per year.

• Status: AB 75 signed into law as Act 28.

SB 620/AB 844 (Groundwater Regulation): Expands current groundwater regulations: places moratorium on high capacity wells in “groundwater management areas” and “groundwater attention areas”; allows citizens to petition DNR for more stringent environmental review for high capacity well permits; changes definition of a spring from 1.0 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 0.25 cfs flow, triggering higher level regulatory scrutiny for new well permit.

• Final Status: DEAD

Gov. Jim Doyle signed into law yesterday SB 273 (2009 WI Act 406), which creates a new type of credit under Wisconsin’s current renewable energy law.

Under current law, electric utilities must provide a certain percentage of their electricity from renewable energy (10 percent by 2015). An electric provider may create credits if it sells more electricity derived from renewable energy in a year than required. Those credits can be banked to comply with the RPS requirements in the future or be sold in an intrastate credit trading market.

U.S. Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) introduced last week their much anticipated climate change legislation. Dubbed the “American Power Act,” the sweeping legislation covers 987 pages. To view a summary of the bill, click here.