Clean Energy Choice

Renewable Energy

Download our one-pager about Clean Energy Choice!

CURRENT EVENTS
Info about Carbon 101: Why your business should care, held Oct 3 at 8am, CUNA Mutual Group in Madison.
MG&E rate increase: Background info and sign-on link here.

Our organization has signed on to this letter encouraging third-party ownership of solar projects at Wisconsin homes and businesses:

As business owners and utility customers, we support policies that expand opportunities to access renewable energy where we live and work.

More than 20 states (including Illinois, Michigan, California, Colorado, Missouri and New Jersey) expressly allow third-party ownership of renewable energy systems on a customer’s premises. In those states, the renewable energy system need not be owned by the host customer. Instead, host customers can sign a contract with a third party who installs, operates, and owns a renewable energy system on the customer’s premises.

States that allow third-party owned renewable energy systems now have the most active markets in the country for small renewable energy systems, and we want Wisconsin to join their ranks.

We believe the Wisconsin renewable energy business community will enjoy substantial and sustained growth if allowed to use the same tools that are available in other states. This is why we strongly endorse the Clean Energy Choice initiative and support legislation that would exempt third-party-owned renewable energy systems that sell energy directly to the host customer from the definition of a public utility.

Clean Energy Choice embraces the virtues of customer choice, fiscal responsibility, property rights and social responsibility. It is a policy tool that allows citizens to exercise their preferences for renewable energy at no extra cost to ratepayers and taxpayers.

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  • Car84

    Some state legislators talked about this, got some press coverage, and didn’t offer any bill that I know of.

  • Roger Aiken

    Utilities blocking the right of communities to create clean power is stepping on the rights of citizens to determine their own energy future. The natural monopoly the utilities enjoy was established to insure energy reliability and prevent duplication of effort for the most cost effective service. Their opposition is driving the system in the exact opposite way and encouraging more inefficiencies in the overall system. Renewables have much to offer for power reliability and security. That case needs to be made.

  • TheDudeofVoo

    ❝ The natural monopoly the utilities enjoy was established to insure energy reliability … ❞

    Wind and solar are notoriously unreliable. Communities, or individuals, who which to ❝create clean power❞ should do so without connecting to the grid. The sudden appearance of household loads on the grid, just because the wind slacked, or the sun hid behind a cloud, causes the monopolistic utility to suddenly have to produce more power. The capability of the monopolistic utility may be limited as to how much power they have to spare, in order to keep your first requirement, ❝… to insure energy reliability … ❞ Similary, the sudden appearance of household solar power on the grid, when the sun shines, might be in excess of the demand for electricity, which will cause the utility to suddenly have to generate less, in order to keep your first requirement, ❝… to insure energy reliability … ❞ At each and every moment, the amount of electricity generated has to exactly match the demand for electricity… no more, no less. The grid has no storage.

  • TheDudeofVoo

    ❝ Renewables have much to offer for power reliability and security.❞

    Not true for solar and wind. That case has been made over and over. Solar and wind are a hazard to grid stability and power security.
    Hydroelectric “renewables” are excellent, but how do you add more? Hydro has other responsibilities … flood control, California’s Delta Smelt, etc. All hydroelectric generation has already been booked, months and months ahead of time.
    Renewables, such as taking a coal-fired generator, and burning wood in it, is also pretty well established as a reliable and secure power generation technique. England’s Drax is burning wood imported from the USA’s North Carolina (and other places). So, it depends upon what “Renewables” you speak of.