Dive Brief:
- For the fourth year in a row, renewables opponents such as Koch Industries and the Kansas Chamber of Commerce are lobbying the legislature to terminate the state renewables mandate. House Bill 2373 would eliminate the standard as of Jan. 1, 2016.
- The 2009 law requires Kansas investor owned utilities to obtain 10% of their electricity from renewables in 2014, 15% from 2016 to 2019, and 20% every year after that.
- The IOUs have already either completed investments or committed to investments that will allow them to obtain 20% of their power from renewables by 2020 and are not expected to back out of those deals.
Dive Insight:
Ohio passed a bill freezing its renewables and energy efficiency standards in 2014 and West Virginia just became the first state in the country to cancel a renewables mandate.
Advocates say the Kansas mandate has positioned the state to be ready to meet initial requirements of the EPA Clean Power Plan and will help it meet the 2030 goal because it constitutes policy infrastructure, which the rule requires.
Kansas had 2,967 MW of installed wind capacity at the end of 2014. It also had between 500 MW and 1,000 MW of wind capacity under construction. At the end of Q3 2014, the state ranked outside the top 30 states in solar PV installed capacity.
The Climate + Energy Project, in association with Republican-affiliated North Star Opinion Research, conducted a 2014 survey that found 91% of Kansans strongly support renewable energy, 73% of Republicans and 82% of Democrats endorse the renewables mandate, and 67% favor a stronger mandate and would pay up to $2 per month for it.
