Rep. Inslee Proposes Shared Fee on Electric Bills for Clean Energy

WASHINGTON—When you’re peddling an esoteric idea with a cumbersome name on Capitol Hill, you expect to draw a fair share of glazed-over looks from senators and representatives.

Renewable energy advocate Craig Lewis is all too familiar with that particular gaze.

“Two years ago, and even today, most legislators give you a blank stare when you mention feed-in tariffs,” Lewis, executive director of the FIT (Feed-in Tariff) Coalition told SolveClimate News in a Wednesday interview. “I figure we’re at 25 percent penetration right now. But we need to be at 80 percent before we can push this bill up the Hill and roll it down the other side.”

The 18-month-old Palo Alto, Calif.-based nonprofit is behind Rep. Jay Inslee’s revamped legislative effort to encourage a mammoth boost in solar and wind power by offering financial incentives to consumers and businesses nationwide who generate electricity via renewable sources.

Inslee’s legislation, introduced late Tuesday night, is called the Renewable Energy Jobs and Security Act. It’s a tweaked version of a bill that went nowhere after the Washington Democrat first introduced it in 2008.

In a nutshell, Inslee’s bill is based on Germany’s feed-in tariff, an enormously successful program that many consider the gold standard worldwide. Producers of clean energy a connection to the nation’s electric grid and predetermined rates from utilities for the power they generate.

The extra cost of the clean power shows up on every citizen's electric bill as a small increment. Everyone pays in common to support the transition to clean energy. 

“Germany is a model for the United States,” Randy Hayes, U.S. director of the nonprofit World Future Council, explained during a Wednesday briefing organized by the FIT Coalition. “It’s a race to catch up. We need to shift from being a nation of energy consumers to a nation of energy producers.”

Fiscal hawks need to be aware that feed-in tariffs are not another bloated government program intended to bankrupt ratepayers, supporters say. Instead, under Inslee's plan a government entity offers a premium price to clean energy generators such as homeowners, schools and industries as an incentive to outcompete dirtier and cheaper coal, oil and natural gas.

The extra cost of clean power is reflected as a line item in each ratepayer’s electric bill—referred to as a shared fee for the common good. Theoretically, the price for clean energy will fall as it displaces fossil fuel.

Timing on the bill is less than perfect because Inslee launched it the day before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., opted to leave a national renewable energy standard out of an extremely pared down energy/climate bill that senators plan to tackle before exiting Washington for their August recess at the end of next week. A feed-in tariff is a pricing mechanism designed to work in tandem with—not replace—a renewable energy standard at the national level or a renewable portfolio standard at the state level.

Feed-in Tariffs Blooming Worldwide

Price guarantees for feeding renewable power into the grid are catching on in dozens of countries worldwide where at least five different types of models seem to be thriving. For example, Vermont and California are among handfuls of states taking a close look at feed-in tariffs, and cities with municipally owned electric utilities such as Indianapolis, Sacramento, San Antonio, Texas, and Gainesville, Fla., are also putting them into place.

Germany initiated its feed-in tariffs back in the early 1990s, using U.S. laws as a model for fashioning its nascent legislation. After reinventing its model in 2000, it has parlayed the price guarantees into an economy where more than 14 percent of Germany's electricity comes from green sources. The plan calls for bumping that number up to 33 percent by 2020.

Payments made to generators of clean energy in Germany have fallen considerably, according to news reports. For instance, The overwhelming success with solar prompted Chancellor Angela Merkel to slice the price paid for power from roof-mounted solar panels by 16 percent in early June.