6.1. ERMUSR 03-09-2010 - Laserfiche WebLink

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lower than originally sought. vlost recently, the new stimulus legislation in the 111th Congress doubled that appropriation to $1.6 billion, again, split three ways. Unfortunately, even at those levels, much of the potential renewable development by eligible entities continues to go unfunded. Renewable Energy Production Incentive (KEPI). The KEPI program was created by the Energy Policy Act of 1992 and reauthorized in 2005. It authorizes the Department of Energy to make direct payments to publicly and cooperatively-owned electric utilities at the rate of 1.9 cent/kWh (indexed for inflation) for electricity generated from solar, wind, and certain geother- mal and biomass electric projects. Prior to the development of CREBs, KEPI had been the only incentive available on the federal level for public utilities to make new investments in renewable energy projects and has been instru- mental in making public power wind projects viable in Minnesota. Congress implemented the KEPI program with two goals in mind: to help public power utilities overcome economic barriers to greater renew- able energy use and to ensure equity between investor-owned utilities that receive energy tax credits and not- for-profit utilities that are unable to do so. $ut for the past 15 years KEPI has been consistently over-subscribed and under-funded; the program needs to be funded at a substantially higher level to accomplish its purpose. MMUA Position For real renewable energy growth, and to provide greater comparability for public entities, CREBs and KEPI should be funded at levels that will. sustain the total effort of public power and other eligible entities. MMUA urges Congress to: • raise the financial cap imposed on the CREBs program, and increase the annual appropriations that fund KEPI.