Sen. Chris Marr, D-Spokane, is spearheading a bill in the Washington Legislature that aims to strengthen environmental standards spelled out by voter-approved Initiative 937, but give electric utilities more ways to meet the standards affordably.

His bill, Senate Bill 5840, is the result of months of discussion with key stakeholder groups and relies heavily on energy conservation, says a Feb. 3 press release describing the legislation. The bill was sent to the Senate floor on March 3 and placed on the floor calendar for a second reading by the Rules Committee, but hadn't advanced further as of Monday of this week.

Marr has predicted that the bill would pass the Senate, but said he expects it to face tough obstacles in the House.

I-937, approved by voters two years ago, requires utilities with at least 25,000 customers to obtain 15 percent of their power from renewable sources, such as wind, solar, or biomass, by 2020. That benchmark is to be phased in over eight years, beginning at 3 percent in 2012 and bumping up to 9 percent in 2016.

Marr's bill would increase the 2012, 2016, and 2020 renewable-energy mandates to 4 percent, 10 percent, and 16 percent, respectively, and would add a 21 percent target for 2025. It also, though, would incorporate several changes designed to make it easier for utilities to hit the thresholds.

For example, it would lower the percentage requirement for renewable energy to each utility's growth in demand for power, if that growth rate is less than the higher fixed percentage specified in the initiative. Thus, if demand for a utility's power grew by something less than 10 percent by 2016—say, 8 percent—it would need only to be getting 8 percent of its power from renewable sources by then.

In addition, utilities could count renewable power acquired from throughout the Western energy grid, rather than just in the Northwest, toward the requirement. They also could count power from small hydropower projects—less than 30 megawatts—as well as power plants built before 1999 that burn biomass, such as bark and wood chips, food and yard wastes, and black liquors derived from algae. Also, the bill would allow utilities to count energy saved from newly implemented conservation measures and efficiency projects at hydroelectric dams toward meeting those targets.

"We need a more rational approach that I believe you can balance," Marr says. In the press release describing the bill, he said, "By taking a pragmatic approach we're strengthening environmental standards and easing the burden on ratepayers."

Under current law, qualifying utilities experiencing little if any growth would have to dump some of their cheap hydroelectric power supply and buy higher-priced resources or renewable energy credits to meet their renewable-energy targets, which is contrary to the logic of I-937, Marr said. Under his bill, those utilities could satisfy the requirement by meeting all of their new power supply demands through new conservation measures, he said.

"As much as anything, this bill promotes energy conservation," Marr said. "It recognizes that the greenest form of energy is the energy that isn't consumed. This is good business, it's good environmental stewardship, and it's great for ratepayers."

In a video accompanying the news release, Marr emphasized that he remains a strong proponent of environmental measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but said, "We have to balance that with rate impacts on ratepayers and on large users, like industrial users, so we don't have a big rate shock."

Spokane's two major electric utilities, investor-owned Avista Corp. and customer-owned Inland Power & Light Co., both say they strongly support Marr's bill.

"We're going to build wind (generation), anyway, but if we can delay it or not have to build as much, that's to benefit customers" by postponing renewable energy-related increases to their utility bills, says Avista spokesman Hugh Imhof.

Also, the bill potentially would allow Avista to count the energy output of its biomass plant at Kettle Falls, Wash., toward its renewable-energy requirement, which it can't do under current law because it was built before 1999, Imhof says.

Kris Mikkelsen, Inland Power's CEO, says she thinks Marr's bill does "a good job of retaining the state's commitment to green and renewable energy," while fixing some of the things that were going to add costs for utilities as they strived to implement the state's new standards.

"I don't think the public really has made the connection in their own minds between the public policy (aspects of ratcheting up renewable-energy requirements) and how that translates into cost impacts," Mikkelsen says.

The Seattle Times article says I-937 backers, including environmentalists and the wind-power industry, oppose Marr's bill, contending it would gut the initiative and ease needed pressure on utilities to pursue cleaner energy.

In an opinion piece the Seattle Times published earlier this week, however, Sen. Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, who supports the bill, said, "To the contrary, we can improve the law by removing unnecessary geographical limitations and the unrealistically narrow definitions of renewable energy it contains. Furthermore, we can diversify our renewable-energy portfolio beyond the current tilt of the law toward wind. And we can allow flexibility for utilities in meeting the standards of I-937 during an economic downturn."