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Home / Washington Business - November/December 2003 / Pros & Cons: State's Energy Policy Must Do No Harm to Consumers, Generators and Environment |
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Pros & Cons: State's Energy Policy Must Do No Harm to Consumers, Generators and Environment |
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Written On: November/December 2003 |
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Written By: Rep. Jeff Morris (D-Anacortes) |
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It has become fashionable, lately, for everyone from soldiers to journalists to household repairpersons to claim an obligation that was once associated exclusively with physicians: “First, do no harm.” The concept, of course, is that someone charged with improving a situation had best not wade in and make things worse. Those are good words to live by, and they come to me often as I prepare for the 2004 session of the Washington Legislature.
As chairman of the House Technology, Telecommunications and Energy Committee, I head a group that, along with its Senate counterpart, is responsible for forming and articulating legislative energy policy at a critical time in our state’s history. Our actions and decisions will affect, just to name a few:
• A multi-billion-dollar industry;
• Household budgets for all Washingtonians;
• The air we breathe and the water we drink;
• The bottom line for small and large businesses statewide;
• The growth of new, energy-related businesses;
• Our state’s overall economy;
• Relations with Canada and with our neighbor states;
• Washington’s business climate; and
• Washington’s actual climate.
With this many constituents, you can see that there are countless definitions of “harm” that we need to keep in mind.
If we drive up utility rates but offer no mitigation for ratepayers, that’s harm, whether the consumer is an aluminum plant or a young family.
If we slice into the bottom line of privately owned generation facilities, that’s harm.
If we set the bar so high it becomes impossible for our energy infrastructure to keep up with Washington’s growing population and industrial requirements, that’s harm.
Conversely, if we ignore the need to reduce the release of dangerous particles into our atmosphere, that’s harm.
That last point – the need to control the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that degrade our atmosphere – is a key issue that the House energy panel will focus on during the 60-day session. My goal, one shared by many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and in and out of the energy industry, is to reduce CO2 emissions from retail electric generating facilities by one-half percent per year for the next two decades.
How quickly could this bill move? Only as quickly as consensus can be attained; if consumers, utilities and environmental groups, at the very least, are not agreed on the goals and the particulars, we’ll have to keep working. I’m convinced there is a solution to this situation that creates market incentives, involves goals and targets that are achievable, and doesn’t have a prohibitive effect on rates – absolutely vital in our price-sensitive region where we’ve enjoyed affordable power since the days of the New Deal.
I didn’t use the word “voluntary” in the previous couple of paragraphs, even though the principals involved would, in fact, need to agree on the details. On another issue, that of alternative energy, voluntary is exactly the right word to describe our approach. Without a doubt, we want to increase the production and use of alternatives – renewables, “green energy,” whatever you prefer.
But we won’t make headway by forcing the option down anyone’s throat – the consumer’s, or industry’s. We learned, or should have learned, from the California debacle that it’s hard to impose drop-dead dates in a marketplace. Markets work when consumers and sellers are ready to converge.
We’ve made green power options voluntary and the results are exceeding all expectations of how many people would seek it out and, often, pay a premium for it. I’ll continue down this path during the coming session – a path that has given Washington the largest wind farm in the United States, as well as created a new biodiesel industry that will profit farmers and create new jobs in hard-hit areas.
My current vision and the framework in which I operate are not much different from when I first came to Olympia as a small-businessman nearly a decade ago: I believed then, and I believe now, that Washington is in a worldwide competition for investment capital, and I want to make sure that when people are making investments, Washington state is the place they want to put their money first.
Those investments could take the form of millions for a new generating facility . . . millions more from a business building a new factory in a state with dependable electricity and reasonable rates . . . or a few thousand from a lone entrepreneur with a new idea and a love for Washington’s trees and waters and wild places.
It won’t happen in a Washington with cheap power but brown air and gray water, and it won’t happen in a Washington where the pendulum has driven utilities to their knees or sent rates through the roof.
We don’t want that Washington; no one does. Instead, I’m looking forward during the coming months to working across the aisle and with my friends in the Senate to craft reasonable policies to encourage a real and steady lessening of CO2 and other pollutants, innovative policies to spur the growth of the alternative energy industry in our state, and effective policies to make Washington an attractive place for responsible investors to build and operate generating facilities. If we don’t do these things – if we ignore our responsibility to first, do no harm – we’ll surely lose infrastructure investments and jobs not only to California and Colorado, but to Taiwan and Singapore.
Rep. Jeff Morris was first elected to the State House in 1996. He represents the 40th legislative district, which includes the San Juan Islands and parts of Skagit and Snohomish counties. He chairs the House Technology, Telecommunications and Energy Committee.
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