by Nick Fitzmaurice, Derf Johnson, & Anne Hedges
The legislative interim committees are in full swing as they tackle studies and start thinking about legislation for the 2025 session. We have yet to see any significant ideas emerge regarding energy and climate, but rest assured there are many months between now and when the committees have to finalize their legislative proposals. For the time being, there are productive bipartisan discussions occurring regarding the protection of Montana’s environment, the energy system, the need for improvements, and the need to protect consumers. Whether these amount to anything is to be determined.
The Energy and Telecommunications Interim Committee (ETIC) has had a number of meetings in recent months. At each meeting, it hears from the beleaguered Montana Public Service Commission (PSC) to receive updates on happenings at the PSC. The PSC has recently come under fire for two reasons. First, there is concern over its approval of debilitating increases in electricity rates for NorthWestern Energy’s residential and business customers.
The other issue was uncovered by the legislative Audit Committee in its recent audit of the PSC, which found large ethical lapses and concern by staff that the PSC lacks ethical integrity. The PSC is a critical component of a fair and equitable energy system in which its role is to rigorously oversee profit-driven monopoly utilities to ensure that they do not gouge consumers. The PSC is supposed to play interference and protect customers, but anyone who has watched the PSC in the last five years understands that it does the monopoly utility’s bidding to the detriment of residential customers and small businesses, all while exhibiting childish infighting and dysfunction. It seems that even the PSC President James Brown wants to jump ship, as he filed to run for the position of State Auditor instead of seeking another term on the PSC.
ETIC is also analyzing resource adequacy and regionalization of the energy system. Both topics have led to robust committee discussions and very thoughtful and informative presentations from more mature utilities in other states. NorthWestern’s presentation focused on the need for more coal and gas due to the spike in power demand during the January cold snap. It was clear that NorthWestern’s lobbyist was relying on talking points and didn’t actually know why half of the Colstrip plant was offline during the first couple of days of the cold snap. Other, more mature utilities gave presentations on their efforts to invest in Montana wind energy resources that will benefit their customers, increase reliability, help them reach decarbonization goals, and benefit Montana communities with new revenue streams. The next ETIC meeting will be March 14 and 15.
The Select Committee on Energy Resource Planning and Acquisition (SCERPA) is the interim legislative committee that NorthWestern Energy lobbied to create after the PSC adopted rules that the utility opposed. The PSC rules comply with a law passed by the 2019 legislature that requires increased transparency and analysis in utility resource planning and acquisition of new generation resources. Between the time when the 2019 bill passed and the first SCERPA meeting, the PSC and NorthWestern Energy heard from hundreds of Montanans about how inadequate and misguided NorthWestern’s latest resource plan is. Considering its latest plan was developed under the old rules, and the updated rules haven’t been utilized in resource planning, MEIC believes NorthWestern’s proposal to analyze how to change the law was premature. It seems that most on the SCERPA committee agree. Even NorthWestern’s representative on the committee said the utility obviously needs to improve its process after the public pummeling the utility received over its most recent plan.
The SCERPA committee should wrap up its process in the next few months with a draft that will be sent on to ETIC. The current proposals for legislation are minor; the most substantial revision is a proposal to implement an independent evaluator to oversee NorthWestern’s resource planning process in order to ensure it is transparent and properly executed. There seems to be broad support for an independent evaluator, and the previous meeting involved discussion on whether that independent evaluator be administered by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) Energy Section, the Montana Consumer Council, or by the utility itself with oversight from the PSC. Consensus was reached that the evaluator would be selected and administered by DEQ, but other points of contention remained around public participation in the planning process and the PSC’s timeframe for reviewing draft plans. The next meeting of SCERPA will be on March 25, where the committee will further refine the bill draft.
The Environmental Quality Council (EQC) has been meeting regularly for the past year on a range of matters important to MEIC, including mining regulations, water quality, and agency rulemaking. At the January meeting, the EQC discussed a number of coal mining issues, including the recent rejection by OSM of changes to the Montana DEQ’s coal program (see article on pg. 14). The EQC has also heard testimony on “critical mineral” resources, which are minerals designated by the federal government as being essential or important for national security and the clean energy transition. Such a designation could potentially lead to certain proposed projects receiving a limited or truncated federal review. Unfortunately, this idea may be pursued at the state level due to heavy industry lobbying and inflated arguments over the value and need for particular minerals. We will certainly be watching this space closely. The next EQC meeting is on March 13 and 14 in Helena. You can attend most of these meetings in person or watch online through the legislative services website: www.leg.mt.gov
This article was published in the March 2024 issue of Down To Earth.
