01.11.2010
Concord Monitor Editorial quoting TJI Executive Director, Dick Henry
   Editorial
Lawmakers backing wrong way to help
Monitor staff
January 11, 2010 - 6:58 am
Their hearts are in the right place, but a bipartisan group of lawmakers are acting like a homeowner who buys more heating oil instead of fixing the broken window that's making his house cold. They want to give more people help with their electric bills, but they would get the money to do so by taking it from a fund used to subsidize energy conservation programs. That's a shortsighted and unsound public policy.
Every electric bill contains a small "systems benefits charge," a fee of a fraction of a cent per kilowatt hour. The fee is measured in mils and each mil is one-tenth of one cent. The current fee is 1.8 mils for energy efficiency programs and 1.5 mils for bill relief.
The bill's sponsors, which include leaders of both parties in the House and Senate, want to temporarily reverse that allocation to get an extra $5 million over the next two years for bill relief at the expense of energy conservation. Utilities are barred from shutting off people's electricity for non-payment during the winter months. The bill's sponsors nonetheless tried to rush the measure through without a Senate hearing. Fortunately, they failed in that attempt last week. That means that senators, like representatives, will get to hear testimony from experts like Dick Henry, head of the Jordan Institute, a non-profit organization that promotes renewable energy and energy conservation.
The need to help more low-income utility customers during the recession is clear. There are 8,000 people on the waiting list for assistance. But the downsides to the way the bill's sponsors want to do it are far too great.
Here are just some of them, courtesy of Henry and others working in the energy conservation and renewable energy field.
• The money spent to reduce bills is not leveraged. The money spent to fund energy conservation programs returns $8 in savings for every dollar invested.
• Money spent on efficiency reduces the consumption of the petroleum-based fuels that heat nearly 90 percent of the state's homes. Money spent on oil flows offshore, often to nations that do not have America's best interests in mind. Money spent to lower electric bills does nothing to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels.
• Money spent on bill relief creates no jobs. Transferring $5 million from the conservation program means the loss of 60 to 70 jobs and an estimated $40 million that energy users would otherwise have saved.
• Money spent on bill relief does nothing to decrease the state's carbon emissions. Energy conservation measures do, and make it more likely that the state will meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals.
Conservation efforts of every stripe have achieved far less than they might have or even faded away because state and federal support for them has waxed and waned. For such measures to work and stimulate job creation and energy savings they need to be consistent. Businesses, including those involved in energy conservation, need consistency. The proposed temporary change in the allocation of systems benefit funds would destroy that consistency and discourage job growth and conservation.
New Hampshire's systems benefits charge is the second lowest in New England. Raising the levy for bill relief to the same 1.8 mil level charged for energy conservation would raise the average electric utility bill by 18 cents. That increase could be offset simply by turning off just one unnecessary light for a few minutes per day, or by replacing one incandescent bulb with a compact fluorescent.
Lawmakers should show good economic and environmental sense and a wee bit of courage by doing the right thing and raising the systems fee rather than robbing Peter to pay Paul.
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