Kansas Legislative News - Kansas Chapter of Sierra Club

KLN #1
January 27, 2006
Charles M. Benjamin
P.O. Box 1642 , Lawrence , KS 66044
(785) 841-5902; 841-5922 fax; chasbenjamin@sbcglobal.net

Purpose of the KLN: The Executive Committee (Ex-Com) of the Kansas Chapter of Sierra Club, primarily, but not exclusively, through its Legislative Committee (Leg-Com), sets the legislative priorities and goals of the Chapter in consultation with me, the Chapter's legislative coordinator. This and other legislative newsletters describe legislation that the Chapter has decided to promote or to defeat in order to carry out the conservation goals of the Chapter. The purpose of this newsletter is to enable, you, a member of the Kansas Chapter's "legislative tree", to play a role in that process.

The text of legislation is at http://www.kslegislature.org/legsrv-bills/index.do . However, the latest version of proposed legislation may not be posted at the above site.

H.B. 2588 , introduced by Rep. Tom Sloan, would require the Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC) that decides on utility rate increases and the Citizens' Utility Ratepayers' Board (CURB) that represents small business and individual ratepayers in KCC rate cases, to consider "technologies which provide long-term economic, social and other benefits, including, but not limited to, environmental benefits and avoided costs of meeting anticipated regulatory requirements over the life of the property" when determining whether or not an investment by a utility in electric generating property is "prudent." A hearing on this proposed legislation was heard in the House Utilities Committee on January 24. Sierra Club supported this legislation in order to send a strong message to both the KCC and CURB that the benefits of renewable energy technologies and environmental upgrades have long term benefits for ratepayers even if there are short term investment costs. Representatives of the KCC and CURB testified against the legislation, the former because they claim the KCC does this already and CURB because they do not want the legislature to tell them how to evaluate prudent investments by utilities. An amended version of HB 2588 was offered by Rep. Sloan on February 27 to the House Utilities Committee but failed to pass out of the Committee favorably.

H.B. 2589 , introduced by Rep. Sloan, would require state agencies to increase the amount of the total energy they consume from "renewable energy resources and technologies" to not less than 2.5% by 2007 and to not less than 10% by 2010. Sierra Club strongly supported these provisions and urged House Utility Committee members to increase those amounts. However, the Sierra Club did not support provisions of the bill that allowed utilities "to retain 50% of the utility's net revenues from wholesale off-system sales of electricity generated by capacity placed in service on or after January 1, 2008 ". We felt that provision would serve as an inducement to Kansas utilities to build more coal-fired generating plants. A hearing on this bill was held in the House Utilities Committee on January 24 where the KCC and CURB spoke in opposition to the legislation. Rep. Sloan offered an amended version of the bill making the renewable energy goals optional and removing the provision that Sierra Club found objectionable. However, this amended version of the bill failed to pass out of the House Utilities Committee on a vote of 7 in favor and 11 opposed.

S.B. 362 was introduced by Sunflower Electric to allow the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) to issue permits to operate industrial landfills to corporate entities that do not own the landfill but that only operate the landfill. Currently only a land owner can make application for a landfill permit. Sunflower is asking for this change in law to allow them to expand their current landfill operation that houses ash from their 363 MW coal plant located near Holcomb to be expanded to handle the ash from an expansion to over 2,000 MW. Sierra Club opposed this bill at a hearing before the Senate Natural Resource Committee on January 19 because it would allow Sunflower and other corporations to set up limited liability corporations to limit their liability from harms done to others from operations of industrial landfills. KDHE offered the Committee an alternative to Sunflower's bill that would require any operator or owner of an industrial landfill to demonstrate that funds are available to ensure payment of the cost of closure and postclosure of the landfill and to provide liability insurance, surety bonds, trust funds, irrevocable letters of credit and other financial assurances to take care of "accidental occurrences." The KDHE version of the bill was passed on January 27 by the Committee to the full Senate.

H.B. 2636 , introduced by Rep. Sloan, would allow local governments and educational entities to form cooperatives to generate and purchase renewable energy and require retail suppliers of electricity to purchase, at wholesale market prices, any surplus renewable energy generated or purchased by such cooperatives. Sierra Club strongly supported this bill at the hearing before the House Utilities Committee on January 26 in order to promote the idea of "community wind farms" and other forms of small scale renewable energy projects that would allow local people to invest in such entities and to keep their investments in renewable energy projects, and the returns on such investments, in their local communities. Representatives of Kansas Electric Power Cooperatives (KEPCo) and Westar testified in strong opposition to the bill arguing that their entities would be required to provide "reserve capacity" to such entities. Rep. Sloan introduced a revised version of the bill that would limit the number of entities that could form a renewable energy coop and that would not require retail electric suppliers to purchase the surplus energy of such coops. However, that version of the bill was defeated on a vote of 7 to 11.

Kansas Sierra Club
c/o Charles Benjamin
P.O. Box 1642
Lawrence , KS 66044 -8642