Alternative energy proposal presses on, clears environmental panel

Requiring 35% generation from renewable sources within 10 years has pressed forward from a committee in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

First-term Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s energy proposal, the Lightning Plan, pushes for more use of alternative energy such as solar and wind. If enacted, the legislation would amend a 2004 law known as the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act.

The advance from the Committee on Environmental & Natural Resource Protection comes a day after rate hikes went into effect for many Pennsylvanians, some as much as 16%.

Lightning Plan: PRESS – Pennsylvania Reliable Energy Sustainability Standard, known also as House Bill 501, is authored by Rep. Danielle Friel Otten. The panel on Monday welcomed Chairman Greg Vitali’s motion to allow “a public safety answering point to require a path study for wind power projects,” the General Assembly bill description says.

Passage was 14-12, with no Republicans in favor and no Democrats against.

Otten, in the bill’s memo to colleagues, writes in part, “We can’t sit around and do nothing while other states pass us by in the race to diversity our energy sources and create clean, reliable and affordable energy.”

She notes Pennsylvania is “45th in the nation in terms of investing in clean energy sources like wind, solar and hydropower.”

For context, the state is second in the nation in natural gas and total energy production – behind Texas – and third in coal, says the Washington & Jefferson College Center for Energy Policy & Management.

The Commonwealth Foundation, a policy group focused on fiscal conservancy in state government, in a release said PRESS – as the proposal is colloquially known – would “impose $155 billion in additional statewide electricity costs for businesses and households.”

“The worst part is that Shapiro’s ‘clean energy’ proposals harm the very energy source that made Pennsylvania a leader in carbon emission reduction: natural gas,” said André Béliveau, senior manager of energy policy at the foundation. “Pennsylvania’s transition from coal to clean-burning natural gas cut 9 million metric tons of emissions from our atmosphere between 2018 and 2023. It is irresponsible for Gov. Shapiro and House Democrats to push a climate agenda that punishes Pennsylvania for succeeding in the very thing they set out to achieve.”