Utilities, Regulation  -  February 17, 2017

Nevada bill calls for 80% renewables by 2040

A Democratic lawmaker in Nevada has proposed legislation to aggressively ramp up the state's renewable portfolio standard.

Introduced by Assemblyman Chris Brooks of Las Vegas on Feb. 14, the bill calls for a dramatic increase in Nevada's current RPS mandate and would require utilities to use clean energy to generate 50% of their electricity by 2030 and 80% by 2040, according to news reports. The state's current target is 25% by 2025, according to the Nevada Public Utilities Commission. 

Assembly Bill 206 calls for incremental increases to the mandate every two years, beginning in 2018 and 2019, and directs the state's energy office to present progress updates to the legislature every two years on the status of the increases through 2040, including reports on technological advances and financing advances that will allow the state to meet the 2040 goal, according to PV Magazine. 

The bill follows what sometimes seems like constant turmoil in Nevada's energy market, particularly as the state grapples with how to handle an increasing demand for cleaner energy from large electricity users and the growth of the rooftop solar market, which has been viewed as a threat to Nevada's utilities.

PV Magazine summarized the latter issue: 

In December 2015, the PUCN abruptly eliminated solar net-metering programs, leading to national companies pulling out of the state entirely and throwing the rooftop distributed generation (DG) segment of the industry into turmoil. Since then, the PUCN has walked back the most egregious aspects of the 2015 decision, including restoring net-metering for 20 years to pre-2015 solar customers. While the walk-back hasn’t completely restored the rooftop DG market in the state, it has eased concerns among most state observers, who now believe the rooftop segment will recover despite the previous disruption.

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