St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Missouri energy efficiency law should be revisited, experts say
In a poker game where the stakes are efficiency rebates underpinning the broadest energy savings program ever pursued in the St. Louis region, utility regulators have to decide who’s bluffing.
Some believe Ameren Missouri is suggesting it might fold and let an almost three-year-old efficiency program lapse at the end of 2015 if regulators don’t approve a plan it favors. After all, it is under no legal obligation to sign up for a program that asks it to help customers buy less of its product — electricity — if it doesn’t want to.
“As I understand the interpretation of the (Missouri) statute, ultimately the utility gets to decide whether they can implement that plan,” Lynn Barnes, Ameren Missouri’s controller and vice president of business planning told the Missouri Public Service Commission in hearings on the plan last week. “So I think we do have the last word.”
But to listen to Missouri’s consumer advocate tell it, there’s plenty of money in the pot to keep Ameren Missouri playing the energy efficiency game, even if the PSC makes some changes the utility doesn’t like.
“I don’t think they’ll walk away,” Geoff Marke, an economist with the Missouri Office of Public Counsel, told the PSC. “I think there’s too much money here.”
Some states, such as Illinois, require utilities to meet energy savings goals, but Missouri’s state law is voluntary. It’s set up to convince utilities to participate by covering program costs and lost revenue while dangling the prospect of a profit, all recouped as charges on monthly electric bills. The $6 per month paid by the average household covers programs such as cash rebates for old appliances, discounted light bulbs at retailers and more extensive building retrofitting for businesses.
But going forward, the public counsel, PSC and some other groups want audits to ensure customers aren’t overbilled by the utility when it collects revenue lost by promoting energy savings. The public counsel says it already has collected $25 million more.
