Kansas Legislature Rejects Koch-Backed Effort To Chip Away At Renewable Energy Standards
Kansas Legislature Rejects Koch-Backed Effort To Chip Away At Renewable Energy Standards
By Jeff Spross on Mar 1, 2013 at 1:55 pm
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that twin votes in Kansas State House and Senate on Thursday put the kibosh on legislative efforts to roll back and delay Kansas’ renewable energy standard (RES).
Passed in 2009, Kansas’ RES requires investor-owned utilities to generate 20 percent of peak demand electrical capacity from renewable sources by 2020. The American Wind Energy Association has actually highlighted the RES as a driving factor in the states burgeoning wind power sector — half of Kansas’ wind farms began operating between 2010 and 2012, after the RES went into effect.
Unfortunately, Kansas has also been targeted by conservative anti-renewable efforts. Republican Rep. Dennis Hedke, the chairman of Kansas’ House Energy and Environment Committee, recently acknowledged he had private talks with a lobbyist for Koch Companies Public Sector LLC concerning the House bill to dilute the RES. (HB 2241) Even anti-tax activist Graver Norquist got in on the action, telling the state’s legislature it ought to abandon the “costly renewable energy mandate so as to mitigate its negative impact on the economy.”
But to Kansas’ credit, it looks like neither effort bore fruit:
[T]he Senate responded by voting 17-23 to defeat Senate Bill 82 that would have postponed the deadline for complying with the Kansas renewable portfolio standard. Instead of Kansas utilities reaching 15 percent of power from wind, solar or other alternative source in 2016, the bill would have moved the date to 2018. The measure also pushed the 20 percent mandate to 2024 from 2020. […]
The House answered by voting 63-59 to send House Bill 2241 back to a committee for additional deliberation. This measure would amend the
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