Legislative Roundup—Renewable Portfolio Standard Bills (HB 121/SB 101) Stalled In Committee

Published March 18, 2024

By Brian Kassof

As Alaskan electric utilities grapple with how to address projected shortfalls of Cook Inlet natural gas, a bill before the legislature would require the Railbelt utilities to integrate more renewable power generation. This bill, HB 121 (and its Senate counterpart SB 101), would establish a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) that would require Railbelt utilities to ensure that a minimum percentage of the power they sell comes from renewable sources of generation (such as wind, solar, or hydroelectric). The bill would require 25 percent renewable power by 2027, a figure that would climb to 80 percent by 2040. HB 121 was introduced in 2023; Governor Dunleavy introduced similar legislation in 2022.

(The Railbelt refers to the region between the Kenai Peninsula and Fairbanks. There are five Railbelt electric utilities, four of which—Homer Electric Association (HEA), Chugach Electric Association (CEA), Matanuska Electric Association (MEA), and Golden Valley Electric Association (GVEA)—are cooperatives. The fifth is the municipally owned Seward Electric System).

Proponents of the RPS bill say that a transition to renewables offers a solution to projected gas shortages that would save Railbelt consumers money. Cook Inlet gas production, which the Railbelt currently relies upon for 75 percent of its power generation, is not expected to be able fully to meet utility needs by 2027. Imported liquified natural gas (LNG), the expected replacement, is projected to cost at least 50 percent more than what utilities now pay for natural gas. On March 6 the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released a study showing that a shift to a system with 80 percent renewable power could save Railbelt consumers over $1 billion between now and 2040. Despite these projected savings, many observers believe that the Railbelt utilities will only pivot to renewables on this scale if they are required to do so by RPS legislation.

There has been bi-partisan support for RPS legislation in Alaska over the past three years. The bill also enjoys popular support—comments submitted to the Legislature have overwhelmingly favored an RPS and a recent poll by Data for Progress showed that 55 percent of Alaskans support the passage of RPS legislation. In January 2024 the idea of RPS was also endorsed in a resolution by the CEA Board of Directors. But the bill has also encountered opposition from utilities and legislators who question the need for such legislation and its potential costs.

In 2024, HB 121 and SB 101 have been blocked in the Legislature by two committee chairs who have refused to hold hearings on them. Senator Jesse Bjorkman (R-Nikiski), Chair of the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee, has said he opposes SB 101 and will block it. In the House, Representative George Rauscher (R-Sutton), who chairs the House Special Committee on Energy, has introduced his own competing legislation, HB 368, which would create non-binding “Clean Energy Standards” (CES) in place of an RPS. HB 368 also defines sources of power generation, such as low-sulfur coal and nuclear power, as “clean” energy. These blockades have left the status of HB 121 and SB 101 in doubt. Similarly, the RPS bill introduced in 2022 (HB 301 and SB 179) also did not get past the committee stage.

What Are RPS and CES?

Renewable Portfolio Standards are laws requiring that a certain percentage of power sold by utilities come from renewable sources of generation. In the United States, 29 states and the District of Columbia currently have RPS laws in effect, which cover 58 percent of US retail electric sales. RPS work by setting renewable power goals that utilities must reach by certain dates. This can be a single target or a series of escalating ones.

RPS laws vary considerably from state to state, but share some common elements. In addition to setting a target or targets, they define what constitutes “renewable power” (solar, wind, some hydro, and geothermal being the most common sources). Utilities failing to meet targets are subject to fines based on how far they fall short. Often the funds from penalties are used to help utility customers make energy upgrades. RPS often allow utilities to purchase Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) to help meet their goals—RECs represent renewable power generated and used elsewhere that is not counted toward another RPS.

The purpose of RPS legislation is to increase the production of renewable power generation. RPS laws do so by creating a reliable market for renewable power, which spurs investment and innovation. Experts believe that RPS could be responsible for up to 50 percent of new renewable generation that came on line in the United States between 2000 and 2020. RPS advocates believe that increasing renewable power brings multiple benefits—it reduces the emission of greenhouse gasses and other environmental pollutants, diversifies energy generation, creates new jobs, and conserves resources.

Clean Energy Standards (CES) are a variation of RPS which focus specifically on reducing carbon emissions. They often feature a wider variety of technologies, including nuclear power. Some CES also take the displacement of energy through greater efficiency and carbon offsets into account. Most states with CES use them as a supplement to existing RPS policies—CES targets are usually much higher than RPS goals, often in the 80-100 percent range.

For more information on RPS, see this AETP Explainer.

What Would HB 121/SB 101 Do?

The bill sets a series of escalating goals for how much power sold by the Railbelt utilities would need to come from renewable sources: 27 percent by the end of 2027, 55 percent by the end of 2035, and 80 percent by the end of 2040. The Railbelt currently gets about 15 percent of its power from renewable resources, primarily from the Bradley Lake hydroelectric project. HB 121 defines renewable power sources as solar, wind, hydroelectric (including tidal), geothermal, gas from landfills or other waste products, wood waste, and biofuels grown in Alaska.

Utilities would be able to purchase RECs to help meet their targets. These could come from two sources—renewable power produced in the Railbelt that was used by another utility but not counted toward their RPS goal or from renewable power generated in a system serving a community receiving Power Cost Equalization (PCE) credits. This second provision is meant to encourage the development of renewable power outside the Railbelt and to help lower the cost of power in PCE communities.

Utilities failing to meet RPS targets would be subject to fines of $20 for each megawatt hour (mWh) they were short of the goal. Utilities could receive a one-time waiver if they missed the first or second target dates. Waivers would also be available in cases where factors beyond a utility’s control (weather, natural disaster, transmission constraints) prevented it from reaching their target. Individual utilities would also be exempt from penalties if the Railbelt met RPS targets collectively.

In lieu of paying fines, utilities could choose to use those funds to help customers pay for household generation systems (like rooftop solar) or energy efficiency upgrades. To encourage utilities to pursue this option, they would be able to recover the cost of such aid in their rates, something they could not do if they decided to pay the fines.

Parts of the bill are designed to encourage homeowners and small businesses to install distributed energy systems such as rooftop solar. During a 2023 presentation on the bill, a key proponent of an RPS in Alaska, Chris Rose, Executive Director of the Renewable Energy Alaska Project (REAP), said the emphasis on rooftop solar was a direct response to pending Cook Inlet gas shortages. Rose said that, while it could take years to build large-scale renewable projects, a significant amount of rooftop solar could be installed relatively quickly. He estimated that as much as ten percent of Anchorage’s power needs could be met this way. He added that current federal tax incentives make rooftop solar an even more attractive option.

In addition to encouraging utilities to help customers pay for rooftop solar systems (in lieu of non-compliance fines), the bill encourages the adoption of this technology in other ways. It allows utilities to count toward their RPS targets both the power customers with solar arrays sell back to a utility (known as ‘net-metering’) and the electricity they generate and use themselves. It also would allow utility customers with solar arrays to carry the credits they earn selling power back to the utility in the summer over to winter months.

Arguments in Favor of RPS Legislation:

 Supporters of HB 121/SB 101 emphasize its potential economic benefits, arguing that a shift to renewables would stabilize Railbelt energy prices and reduce the need to import expensive LNG. This argument was recently bolstered by the new NREL study, which estimates that moving to a system relying primarily on renewable power could save Railbelt consumers in excess of $1 billion over the next 15 years. The bill’s backers also point to other benefits, such as increasing the state’s energy independence, taking advantage of unprecedented federal programs supporting renewable power development, and reducing the emission of greenhouse gases contributing to global warming.

There has been bi-partisan support for RPS legislation in Alaska. The 2022 version was introduced at the request of Governor Dunleavy, and HB 121 was sponsored in 2023 by Representative Jesse Sumner (R-Wasilla); the bill is co-sponsored by Representatives Jennie Armstrong (D-Anchorage) and Genevieve Mina (D-Anchorage). Its Senate counterpart, SB 101 was introduced by Senator Löki Tobin (D-Anchorage) and is co-sponsored by Senators Elvi Gray-Jackson (D-Anchorage) and Scott Kawasaki (D-Fairbanks).

In his sponsor statement, Sumner noted that the cost of electricity on the Railbelt has been rising over the past ten years, reflecting increases in the cost of Cook Inlet natural gas. The announcement by Hilcorp, in April 2022, that it would not be able to renew existing utility contracts for natural gas, only increased concern about the future price of power. Estimates are that importing LNG could drive up the cost of electricity at least another 15 percent, if not more. A reliance on LNG would leave the Railbelt utilities with the choice of being exposed to a volatile world LNG market, where prices have fluctuated wildly over the past few years, or locking themselves into long-term contracts that could leave them paying above market prices in the future.

RPS supporters point out that renewables would not be subject to such price fluctuations—costs are fairly predictable once generation units are constructed. They also note that the price of renewable generation and battery storage have dropped substantially over the past 20 years, as the technology has advanced—during a REAP webinar in November 2022, Rose said that the cost of solar power has declined 90 percent a kilowatt hour over that period.

The new NREL study, released in March 2024, backs up these arguments. It is a follow-up study to one released in 2022 at the behest of Governor Dunleavy. The first study examined the feasibility of attaining 80 percent renewable generation in the Railbelt by 2040. It identified five different scenarios where combinations of wind, solar, and hydropower could meet these goals. The new NREL report considers the economics of shifting to renewables. It finds that the least expensive generation portfolio for the Railbelt would be one that relies on 76 percent renewable power by 2040. Such a system, it estimates, would likely save Railbelt consumers over $100 million a year by the 2030s, with a cumulative savings of $1.3 billion dollars by 2040. A system that meets the RPS requirement of 80 percent renewable power would be slightly less efficient, but would still save over $1.2 billion.

In presentations to the House Energy and Senate Labor and Commerce Committees in 2023, Rose laid out a number of other benefits of RPS. It would make Alaska more energy independent, relying on the state’s own resources (wind, sunlight, water, geothermal) instead of imported LNG. Passage of RPS could also help attract outside investment in large-scale renewable projects to Alaska. Rose said that national and international renewable developers have told him that, without an RPS, Alaska is too small and uncertain of a market for investment, but that they would be much more interested if they knew there was a sure market for renewable power.

Rose also pointed out that the unprecedented federal subsidies and tax credits for renewable energy development available under the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) make this an ideal moment for a large-scale transition to renewables. Federal support is available both for the developers of large-scale projects and individual homeowners.

The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions associated with global warming is a final benefit identified by the bill’s supporters. While introducing the bill to the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee in May 2023, Tobin underlined the impact of climate change on Alaska, using Typhon Merbok, which devastated the state’s western coast in the fall of 2022, as an example. She said that without “swift and immediate action” Alaska will see more and more such events. The subject of climate change was also a major theme in letters sent to the Legislature in support of RPS.

Most of these arguments—the potential economic benefits of renewables, avoiding reliance on imported LNG, reducing carbon emissions—were cited by CEA’s board in its January 2024 resolution supporting an RPS in Alaska. The resolution stopped short of explicitly endorsing HB 121, and included two elements the board believed any RPS bill should have—waivers for non-compliance due to factors outside the utilities’ control and a clause requiring non-compliance penalties be used for renewable energy projects benefiting a cooperative’s members (the first is included in HB 121, the second differs slightly from the bill’s language).

CEA’s board also noted that an RPS would create regulatory certainty for utilities and independent power producers. It is currently unknown if the Regulatory Commission of Alaska (RCA), which oversees most electric utilities, would approve contracts for renewable generation if the initial cost of power is higher than current gas-generated power, even if the renewable power would be less expensive if imported-LNG were used. An RPS would end this uncertainty by allowing the RCA to consider generation diversification in approving contracts.

Utility Responses to RPS Legislation in Alaska:

Aside from the CEA board resolution, the Railbelt utilities’ basic public position on RPS legislation (as conveyed by senior staff) has been to support what they identify as its main intent (reducing carbon emissions), but to voice serious concerns about many of its specific components. They have not engaged directly with the economic arguments in favor of an RPS, but have maintained that such legislation is likely to raise the cost of power, not lower it. They have worked in public and behind the scenes to amend and revise the bills, an effort that began in 2021 before HB 301’s introduction. Over the past year MEA’s CEO, Tony Izzo, has been more public in his opposition to the passage of RPS, and has argued that the Railbelt would be better served by a non-binding CES that rewards utilities for reaching targets instead of fining them for non-compliance.

Before 2024 the elected boards of the Railbelt utilities had remained silent on the question of RPS. This changed in January 2024 when CEA’s board passed its resolution supporting an RPS and GVEA’s board passed a more ambivalent resolution on the topic. HEA and MEA’s boards have yet to take a position on an RPS, but have recently made policy statements on renewables or ‘clean energy.’ In July 2023 MEA’s board approved a strategic plan that includes an aspirational (non-binding) goal of 50 percent clean energy generation by 2050. In January 2024 HEA’s board repealed its previous goal of reaching 50 percent renewable power by 2025, replacing it with a statement on diversifying sources of energy that does not privilege any specific technologies.

The January 2024 resolution passed by the GVEA Board said that it supported the main goals of the legislation (reducing carbon emissions and diversifying energy resources), but had serious concerns about specific aspects of the bill (the dates are unrealistic, targets should be applied collectively, that non-compliance fines are inappropriate for member-owned cooperatives, and that any such legislation should include state financial support).

The GVEA resolution reflects the utilities’ general approach to the question (apart from the CEA resolution)--while agreeing that lowering carbon emissions is a worthwhile goal, senior staff members have expressed varying degrees of concern over many elements of both HB 301 and HB 121. They say that the target dates and target levels are either unachievable or would be prohibitively expensive, that an RPS would undermine system reliability, that current transmission constraints do not allow this level of renewable integration, and that non-compliance fines would hurt consumers (see below for more on these criticisms). Statements to this effect have been made on numerous occasions, most extensively and clearly during testimony on HB 301 given by representatives from CEA, GVEA, and HEA to the House Energy Committee in March 2022.

Utility officials have also made their case behind the scenes. As shown in an article by Nat Herz, Izzo was in communication in late 2021 with Curtis Thayer, the Executive Director of the Alaska Energy Authority (AEA), regarding the Railbelt utilities’ concerns about potential RPS legislation. According to an email from Thayer to an aide to Governor Dunleavy, the utilities believed the proposed goals were “unattainable” and would raise the cost of power. MEA even sent Thayer preliminary modeling results that claimed that an 80 percent RPS goal would raise member rates by up to 28 percent (a MEA spokesperson told Herz these figures were “very preliminary.”) Other emails from Izzo to Thayer suggested the utilities were coordinating their messaging on the dangers of the proposed RPS.

One result of this coordination was a joint January 2022 letter from all five Railbelt utilities to the Governor, that expressed support for efforts to reduce carbon emissions, but cautioned that a “sensible” approach must be taken, one that avoided “unintended consequences.” The letter strongly implied that, based on their own research and shared vision, the RPS legislation was rushed and unrealistic.

It is possible that the utilities have also been lobbying legislators on an RPS. While they do not disclose the content of their lobbying activities, each of the Railbelt utilities is spending between $45,000 and $67,500 on lobbyists in Juneau this year (this does not include spending on a joint lobbying effort to get the state to match a federal grant to upgrade the Railbelt transmission system). According to MEA’s 2024 disclosure, its lobbying interests this session include issues relating to “renewable energy.” In 2024 REAP hired its own lobbyist in Juneau to advocate on behalf of an RPS.

Until recently the Railbelt utilities’ public engagement with RPS legislation had focused on amending it to address their concerns. Over the past six months, however, some utility staff have expressed support for replacing HB 121 with legislation creating a non-binding CES. Izzo began to make the case for this late last summer, primarily in the context of Governor Dunleavy’s Alaska Energy Security Task Force (AESTF).

Izzo was a member of the AESTF and served as Co-Chair of its Railbelt Sub-Committee on Transmission, Generation, and Storage. When another AESTF sub-committee (Incentive and Subsidies) considered the adoption of a statewide RPS and system of RECs, the Railbelt Sub-Committee came out strongly against the idea. Izzo said the AESTF should instead endorse the creation of a non-binding CES for the Railbelt that included incentives for reaching ‘clean energy’ goals instead of fines for non-compliance. At the Railbelt Sub-Committee’s September 14 meeting he said that he was aware of efforts to draft such legislation.

Izzo’s position on a CES was backed by the rest of the sub-committee, including John Sims, the Executive Director of Enstar, the utility that provides natural gas for heating in South Central Alaska. As noted in a recent AETP article, Enstar has been trying to convince the Railbelt electric utilities to join it in the collective purchase and importation of LNG. Passage of an RPS would complicate this plan since it would reduce the electric utilities’ need for natural gas. In November the AESTF voted unanimously to incorporate the Railbelt Sub-Committee’s recommendation for a Railbelt CES into its final report.

 At a March 7 meeting of the House Energy Committee, representatives from HEA, MEA, and GVEA spoke positively of the proposed CES bill (HB 368), although stopped short of explicitly endorsing it. HEA’s Chief Strategy Officer, Keriann Baker, called it “a step in the right direction,” while MEA’s Chief Strategy Officer, Julie Estey, identified several areas where she believed it improved on the RPS bill.

Criticisms of HB 121/SB 101:

Criticism of the RPS bills (including by utility officials) has focused on a few key issues. The proposed RPS targets and dates have been a major point of contention. Critics hold that the targets in HB 121 are too ambitious, and either the percentages need to be reduced or the dates pushed back. They cite a litany of reasons for making such changes, including that the current deadlines would threaten system reliability and that the cost would be too great.

The issue of reliability has frequently been raised as a reason for modifying or rejecting an RPS. This stems from the intermittent (or ‘non-firm”) nature of some renewable power such as wind or solar—system operators cannot control when the wind will blow or the sun will shine. Because the power grid needs to be balanced—roughly the same amount of power entering the system as is being used—the integration of renewable power requires significant energy storage and backup power generation. This will create some technical challenges and require a much higher level of coordination among the Railbelt utilities to succeed. Utility officials have also questioned whether a system geared toward renewables would be able to meet periods of peak demand for electricity, raising the specter of brownouts.

Cost is another frequently raised issue. Utility officials have consistently argued that meeting an RPS would be expensive and lead to steep rate increases. This would be in part, critics argue, because of Alaska’s high construction costs. In 2022, Brian Hickey, at the time CEA’s Chief Operating Officer, also said that the need to provide back-up generation to compensate for the non-firm nature of renewables (this is known as “regulation”) effectively doubles the price of renewable power in Alaska. Regulation requirements and costs for renewable power have sometimes been a point of contention between the Railbelt utilities and renewable advocates. The Railbelt utilities have not yet responded to the new NREL study.

Utility officials have also argued that an RPS would impose substantial administrative costs on them. In September 2023 testimony to the RCA, Izzo claimed that filing waivers for non-compliance fines would require spending “significant ratepayer dollars.”

The Railbelt’s limited transmission system is frequently cited as a reason why an RPS cannot be implemented. Achieving a high level of renewable penetration would require generation facilities spread throughout the Railbelt, to account for different weather conditions and balance the use of different technologies. The current Railbelt transmission system is not equipped to move power on this scale, and would require considerable upgrades. The Railbelt utilities have developed a ten-year plan to make such upgrades and are currently asking the Legislature for $206.5 million to match a federal grant to begin this process. The RPS bills under consideration include waivers for non-compliance due to “transmission network constraints.”

A last point of frequent criticism concerns the potential fines for non-compliance. The heads of the utilities have consistently argued that, while fines might work to motivate investor-owned utilities, they are not appropriate for member-owned cooperatives, whose ratepayers would end up bearing their cost. In his 2023 testimony to the RCA, Izzo estimated that non-compliance fines could cost MEA as much as $34 million a year by the late 2030s.

While the utilities have taken a nuanced position on RPS, other critics are more absolute in their dismissal of it. Some oppose state regulation of such questions in general. Others ask whether carbon emissions need to be reduced at all, questioning the science behind global warming. Some want the state to do more to exploit its fossil fuel resources. During a December 2023 discussion by RCA Commissioners on RPS, Commissioner Robert Pickett suggested that RPS legislation could potentially be dangerous, saying that the devastating fire that destroyed the city of Lahaina in August 2023 could be seen as an indirect consequence of Hawaii’s RPS law.

Attempts to Amend or Replace RPS Legislation, Including HB 368:

Multiple attempts have been made to amend the RPS bills to address at least some of the concerns raised about them. These have included changes to address issues discussed above, such as targets and dates, cost, reliability, infrastructure needs, fines, and individual compliance. Other revisions have expanded what technologies can be considered “clean energy”. HB 368 differs substantially from HB 121, and is intended as a replacement, not a revision.

Numerous amendments were made to HB 301 before the end of the 2022 legislative session, including ones that renamed it a CES and added nuclear power as a source of clean energy. The number of targets were reduced and the dates moved back. Several changes were made to make it easier for utilities to meet RPS goals, including the inclusion of power used by customers with solar arrays. The amendments also allowed utilities to address non-compliance through investment in renewable generation, and to waive penalties if collective compliance were achieved at any target date. Some of these changes were incorporated into HB 121/SB 101, although a few (later dates, the inclusion of nuclear power) were not.

HB 368, the CES bill introduced in February, is markedly different from the RPS bills. It starts from the basic premise of a CES endorsed by the AESTF (of which Rauscher was a member)—that goals should be non-binding and utilities rewarded for reaching them. It sets target dates for achieving clean energy goals and provides transferable tax credits worth $2 per mWh for qualifying clean energy production (the figure in the original bill, 0.2 cents per kilowatt hour, may have been an error—an amendment submitted by Rauscher changes this to 2 cents per kilowatt hour, which translates to $20 per mWh). These credits would only be available for power from new ‘clean energy’ facilities in their first ten years of operation. The Railbelt utilities pay limited state taxes, so the credits need to be transferable so they can be sold.

HB 368 sets clean energy targets of 35 percent by 2036 and 60 percent by 2051. However, it also contains a requirement that the Railbelt transmission grid be upgraded in as-of-yet undefined ways by 2026—if those upgrades are not made by that time (which is very possible), the target dates would be pushed out into the future. HB 368 defines a wide-array of technologies as “clean energy”—these include renewable power, nuclear power, and, more controversially, low-sulfur coal generation.

Some aspects of the bill are not entirely clear—in a posting to the Alaska Energy Blog, researcher and author Erin McKittrick called it a “jumbled mess.” The tax credits in the initial bill only apply to new generation built and operated by the utilities themselves, with independent power producers excluded. It is also not clear what consequences, if any, the utilities face if they miss the targets. On March 14 a number of amendments were offered to address some of these issues—Rauscher hopes to have the Committee vote on these on March 19.

According to a presentation to the House Energy Committee by Steve Colt of the Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP) on March 14, if amendments are passed adjusting the tax credit to $20 mWh and extending the credits to power provided by independent power producers, HB 368 would probably cost the state about $650 million in lost tax revenues between now and 2051.

Initial hearings on HB 368 focused on two of the included technologies—micro-nuclear plants and a low-sulfur coal plant that would use carbon capture technology. Neither of these technologies are currently in commercial use in the United States, although money for coal plants with carbon capture was included in the IRA at the insistence of Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia). There are also several companies developing micro nuclear technology.

Critics of RPS legislation have sometimes used the promise of as-of-yet undeployed technologies as a reason not to pass it. During his 2022 testimony to the House Energy Committee, Brian Hickey said that passing an RPS would lock the Railbelt into technologies (wind and solar) that might soon be outdated. At a REAP-sponsored panel discussion on RPS in April 2023, Suzanne Settle, Vice President of Land, Energy, and Resources at Cook Inlet Region Inc., which operates the Fire Island wind farm near Anchorage) said she believes that Alaskans tend to look for big, single-source solutions, like pipelines, mega-projects, or new technologies, to address problems like replacing Cook Inlet gas, instead of embracing more complex solutions like an RPS.

Moving Forward:

Unless Bjorkman and Rauscher change their positions and allow hearings on HB 121 and SB 101, there is no obvious path forward for the bills this legislative session. Bjorkman appears adamant in his opposition to the bill—according to Nat Herz, in January he told members of a gas- and oil-trade group he was dead set against an RPS and that SB 101 was “going nowhere.” Bjorkman told Herz he was open to legislation to ease transmission constraints and reduce regulations that he sees as obstacles to renewable projects.

On the House side, so long as HB 368 is being considered, Rauscher is unlikely to allow discussion of HB 121. In 2022 Rauscher was the sole member of the House Energy Committee to vote against advancing the amended version of HB 301. HB 368 could be amended to include some elements of HB 121, but it is unlikely that its core idea—using non-binding incentives instead of penalties for non-compliance—would change. There is currently no Senate version of the bill.

HB 121 and SB 101 will both lapse at the end of the current legislative session if they are not passed, and any new RPS bills would have to be introduced in 2025. Meanwhile, the date when Cook Inlet natural gas will no longer be able to meet utility needs draws nearer. There are several other types of legislation being considered in Juneau that would impact the future of Railbelt electric power generation, including ones addressing transmission, but none that address the Railbelt’s long-term generation needs directly.

AETP will provide an overview of other electric-related legislation in the near future.

Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Bills Referenced:

2023-2024 Legislative Session bills

HB 121—House version of RPS bill introduced by Rep. Jesse Sumner (R-Wasilla) in March 2023. Received one hearing in the House Energy Committee in 2023, currently being held in that committee.

SB 101—Senate version of RPS bill introduced by Sen. Löki Tobin (D-Anchorage) in March 2023. Received one hearing in Senate Labor and Commerce in May 2023, currently being held in that committee.

HB 368—Clean Energy Standard Bill introduced by the House Energy Committee (chaired by Rep. George Rauscher (R-Sutton) in February 2024. Has received four hearings in House Energy, currently awaiting amendments.

2021-2022 Legislative Session bills

HB 301—House version of RPS bill introduced at Governor’s request in February 2022. Amended and advanced by the House Energy and Labor and Commerce Committees, ended session in the House Finance Committee.

SB 179—Senate version of RPS bill introduced at Governor’s request, ended session in the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee.

Acronyms:

AESTF—Alaska Energy Security Task Force, body convened by Governor Dunleavy in 2023, to make recommendations on energy policy.

ACEP—The Alaska Center for Energy and Power, a research center at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

CEA—Chugach Electric Association, serving Anchorage area.

CES—Clean Energy Standard

GVEA—Golden Valley Electric Association, serving Fairbanks and interior Railbelt communities.

HEA—Homer Electric Association, serving western part of Kenai Peninsula.

IRA—Inflation Reduction Act, 2022 federal legislation that includes provisions supporting renewable energy development.

LNG—Liquified Natural Gas.

MEA—Matanuska Electric Association, serving Mat-Su valley region.

NREL—National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

PCE—Power Cost Equalization, program to lower energy costs in rural Alaskan communities.

RCA—Regulatory Commission of Alaska, regulates some utilities including the four Railbelt electric cooperatives.

REAP—Renewable Energy Alaska Project, non-profit organization promoting renewable power in Alaska.

REC—Renewable Energy Credit, feature of some RPS bills.

RPS—Renewable Portfolio Standard or Standards. The singular refers to specific RPS bills, the plural to the concept and these bills collectively.