By: Farabee H.B. No. 3345
A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT
Relating to this state's goal for energy efficiency
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
SECTION 1. Section 39.905, Utilities Code, is amended by
amending Subsections (a), (b), and (d), and adding Subsection (h)
to read as follows:
(a) It is the goal of the legislature that:
(1) electric utilities will administer energy
efficiency incentive programs in a market-neutral,
nondiscriminatory manner but will not offer underlying competitive
services;
(2) electric utilities will assist in building an
infrastructure of trained and qualified energy services providers,
allowing and encouraging the participation of retail electric
providers in service delivery, that will ensure that all customers,
in all customer classes, will have a choice of and access to energy
efficiency alternatives and other choices from the market,
including demand-side renewable energy systems, that allow each
customer to reduce energy consumption, peak demand or energy costs;
(3) each electric utility will annually provide,
through a cost-effective portfolio of market-based standard offer
programs or limited, targeted, market-transformation programs,
incentives sufficient for retail electric providers and
competitive energy service providers to acquire additional
[cost-effective] energy efficiency for [residential and
commercial] customers, other customers at transmission-level
industrial facilities, equivalent to at least:
(A) one-half of one [10] percent of the electric
utility's peak [annual growth in] demand, not including demand from
transmission-level industrial facilities, [of residential and
commercial customers] by January 1, 2012 [December 31, 2007]; and
(B) one [15] percent of the electric utility's
peak [annual growth in] demand, not including demand from
transmission-level industrial facilities, [of residential and
commercial customers] by January 1, 2015 [December 31, 2008;
provided that the electric utility's program expenditures for 2008
funding may not be greater than 75 percent above the utility's
program budget for 2007 for residential and commercial customers,
as included in the April 1, 2006, filing; and
[(C) 20 percent of the electric utility's annual
growth in demand of residential and commercial customers by
December 31, 2009, provided that the electric utility's program
expenditures for 2009 funding may not be greater than 150 percent
above the utility's program budget for 2007 for residential and
commercial customers, as included in the April 1, 2006, filing];
(4) as a component of its portfolio of programs, each
utility will provide incentives sufficient to facilitate the
acquisition of demand-side renewable energy systems that shall
produce the utility's load-proportionate share of 200 megawatts of
electricity or avoided electric consumption, by January 1, 2015, as
required by Subsection (b)(7);
(5) [(4)] each electric utility in the ERCOT region
shall create specific programs at a scale sufficient to [use its
best efforts to encourage and] facilitate the involvement of the
region's retail electric providers in the mass marketing and
widespread delivery of efficiency programs and programs for
demand-side renewable energy systems [demand response programs]
under this section;
(6) [(5)] retail electric providers in the ERCOT
region, and electric utilities outside of the ERCOT region, shall
provide customers with energy efficiency educational materials;
and.
(7) [(6)] notwithstanding Subsection (a)(3), electric
utilities shall continue to make available, at 2007 funding and
participation levels, any load management standard offer programs
developed for industrial customers and implemented prior to May 1,
2007.
(b) The commission shall provide oversight and adopt rules
and procedures to ensure that the utilities can achieve the goal of
this section, including:
(1) establishing an energy efficiency cost recovery
factor for ensuring timely and reasonable cost recovery for utility
expenditures made to satisfy the goal of this section;
(2) establishing an incentive under Section 36.204,
sufficient to mitigate the effect of lost revenue associated with
the success of efficiency programs required by this section, to
reward utilities administering programs under this section that
exceed the minimum goals established by this section;
(3) providing a utility that is unable to establish an
energy efficiency cost recovery factor in a timely manner due to a
rate freeze with a mechanism to enable the utility to:
(A) defer the costs of complying with this
section; and
(B) recover the deferred costs through an energy
efficiency cost recovery factor on the expiration of the rate
freeze period;
(4) ensuring the costs associated with programs
provided under this section are borne by the customer classes that
receive the services under the programs; [and]
(5) ensuring the program rules encourage the value of
the incentives to be passed on to the end-use customer;
(6) ensuring that programs operate at a scale
sufficient to:
(A) reduce the rate of free ridership;
(B) ensure that all eligible customers have
access to the programs; and
(C) allow retail electric providers and
competitive energy service providers to mass market and deliver the
programs to all eligible customers;
(7) establishing a statewide market transformation
program to facilitate the use of demand-side renewable energy
systems in supplying or reducing demand equivalent to not less
than:
(A) 50 megawatts of electricity by January 1,
2012; and
(B) 200 megawatts of electricity by January 1,
2015; and
(8) ensuring that programs under this section lead to
a significant and continuing reduction in demand or energy
consumption, or costs, by using a ten-year standard measure life as
the basis for calculating the contribution of either particular
measures or programs toward achievement of the goals of this
section.
(d) The commission shall establish a procedure for
reviewing and evaluating market-transformation program options
described by this section [subsection] and other options. A market
transformation program that is launched as a pilot program shall be
continued for more than three years only if the commission
determines that the pilot program is an appropriate means of
addressing special market barriers that prevent or inhibit the
measure or behavior addressed by the pilot program from being
delivered or adopted through normal market channels, under the
electric utility's standard offer programs [In evaluating program
options, the commission may consider the ability of a program
option to reduce costs to customers through reduced demand, energy
savings, and relief of congestion. Utilities may choose to
implement any program option approved by the commission after its
evaluation in order to satisfy the goal in Subsection (a),
including:
(1) energy-smart schools;
(2) appliance retirement and recycling;
(3) air conditioning system tune-ups;
(4) the use of trees or other landscaping for energy
efficiency;
(5) customer energy management and demand response
programs;
(6) high performance residential and commercial
buildings that will achieve the levels of energy efficiency
sufficient to qualify those buildings for federal tax incentives;
(7) programs for customers who rent or lease their
residence or commercial space;
(8) programs providing energy monitoring equipment to
customers that enable a customer to better understand the amount,
price, and time of the customer's energy use;
(9) energy audit programs for owners and other
residents of single family or multifamily residences and for small
commercial customers;
(10) net-zero energy new home programs;
(11) programs for solar thermal, [or] solar electric
programs,
(12) programs for using windows and other glazing
systems, glass doors, and skylights in residential and commercial
buildings that reduce solar gain by at least 30 percent from the
level established for the federal Energy Star windows program].
(h) In this section, "demand-side renewable energy system"
means a system that:
(1) uses distributed renewable generation, as defined
by Section 39.916; or
(2) reduces the need for energy consumption by using a
renewable energy technology or natural mechanism of the
environment, including a geothermal heat pump or solar water
heater.
SECTION 2. Section 39.905(b-2), Utilities Code, is
repealed.
SECTION 3. This Act takes effect September 1, 2009.