Senator Mary Margaret Whipple will join us at VB Dems today, Thursday, March 29th starting at 3:30 p.m. for a live-blog discussing the electric re-regulation bill that Governor Kaine amended and presented yesterday. Ideally, we want to limit the discussion of that bill as it specifically applies to provisions for renewable energy use, incentives for clean electricity generation, and conservation and energy efficiency. She will most certainly also entertain questions regarding all her brilliant work on clean energy initiatives in Virginia.Her RPS bill was sent to the Committee on Labor and Commerce where on Feb. 6, 2007 it was left to die. However emerging out of that Committee the day before was SB1416, this re-regulation bill, that passed both the Senate (Sen. Whipple herself supporting) and the House by large majorities, before landing on the Governor's desk, where yesterday he issued amendments to it.
Critics of the re-regulation bill say the bill creates incentives to build new dirty coal plants and "fails to provide a level playing field for energy efficiency, the cheapest, cleanest and fastest resource available to Virginians." (Mike Tidwell, Chesapeake Climate Action Network). Critics also says that the legislation's required 5% reduction in retail electric consumption by 2022 is "embarrassingly modest." They recommended requiring savings of 5% by 2011, 10% by 2016 and 17% by 2022.
So, how well did Governor Kaine do with his amendments to the bill? That's one good question for Senator Whipple. Please feel free to leave your questions at VB Dems starting now, but keep in mind that we really want to focus this discussion on the conservation and clean energy aspects of this bill and the "what now?" aspects of getting Virginia cleaner and greener, which are all issues for which Senator Whipple is immensely knowledgable as opposed to the more consumer and/or SCC related issues of the bill that we can take up in future blog discussions.