Senate Bill No. 432
(By Senators Oliverio, Browning, Jenkins, Chafin and McCabe)
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[Introduced February 2, 2010; referred to the Committee on
Energy, Industry and Mining; and then to the Committee on
Economic Development.]
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A BILL to amend and reenact §24-2F-3 of the Code of West Virginia,
1931, as amended, relating to adjusting the definition of
"renewable and recycled energy resource".
Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That §24-2F-3 of the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended,
be amended and reenacted to read as follows:
ARTICLE 2F. ALTERNATIVE AND RENEWABLE ENERGY PORTFOLIO STANDARD.
§24-2F-3. Definitions.
Unless the context clearly requires a different meaning, as
used in this article:
(1) "Advanced coal technology" means a technology that is used
in a new or existing energy generating facility to reduce airborne
carbon emissions associated with the combustion or use of coal and
includes, but is not limited to, carbon dioxide capture and sequestration technology, supercritical technology, advanced
supercritical technology as that technology is determined by the
Public Service Commission, ultrasupercritical technology and
pressurized fluidized bed technology and any other resource,
method, project or technology certified by the commission as
advanced coal technology.
(2) "Alternative and renewable energy portfolio standard" or
"portfolio standard" means a requirement in any given year that
requires an electric utility to own credits in an amount equal to
a certain percentage of electric energy sold in the preceding
calendar year by the electric utility to retail customers in this
state.
(3) "Alternative energy resources" means any of the following
resources, methods or technologies for the production or generation
of electricity:
(A) Advanced coal technology;
(B) Coal bed methane;
(C) Natural gas;
(D) Fuel produced by a coal gasification or liquefaction
facility;
(E) Synthetic gas;
(F) Integrated gasification combined cycle technologies;
(G) Waste coal;
(H) Tirederived fuel;
(I) Pumped storage hydroelectric projects;
(J) Recycled energy, which means useful thermal, mechanical or
electrical energy produced from: (i) Exhaust heat from any
commercial or industrial process;
and (ii) waste gas, waste fuel or
other forms of energy that would otherwise be flared, incinerated,
disposed of or vented;
and (iii) electricity or equivalent
mechanical energy extracted from a pressure drop in any gas,
excluding any pressure drop to a condenser that subsequently vents
the resulting heat; and
(K) Any other resource, method, project or technology
certified as an alternative energy resource by the Public Service
Commission.
(4) "Alternative and renewable energy resource credit" or
"credit" means a tradable instrument that is used to establish,
verify and monitor the generation of electricity from alternative
and renewable energy resource facilities, energy efficiency or
demand-side energy initiative projects or greenhouse gas emission
reduction or offset projects.
(5) "Alternative energy resource facility" means a facility or
equipment that generates electricity from alternative energy
resources.
(6) "Commission" or "Public Service Commission" means the
Public Service Commission of West Virginia as continued pursuant to
section three, article one of this chapter.
(7) "Customer-generator" means an electric retail customer who
owns and operates a customer-sited generation project utilizing an alternative or renewable energy resource or a net metering system
in this state.
(8) "Electric utility" means any electric distribution company
or electric generation supplier that sells electricity to retail
customers in this state. Unless specifically provided for
otherwise, for the purposes of this article, the term "electric
utility" may not include rural electric cooperatives, municipally-
owned electric facilities or utilities serving less than thirty
thousand residential electric customers in West Virginia.
(9) "Energy efficiency or demand-side energy initiative
project" means a project in this state that promotes customer
energy efficiency or the management of customer consumption of
electricity through the implementation of:
(A) Energy efficiency technologies, equipment, management
practices or other strategies utilized by residential, commercial,
industrial, institutional or government customers that reduce
electricity consumption by those customers;
(B) Load management or demand response technologies,
equipment, management practices, interruptible or curtailable
tariffs, energy storage devices or other strategies in residential,
commercial, industrial, institutional and government customers that
shift electric load from periods of higher demand to periods of
lower demand;
(C) Industrial by-product technologies consisting of the use
of a by-product from an industrial process, including, but not limited to, the reuse of energy from exhaust gases or other
manufacturing by-products that can be used in the direct production
of electricity at the customer's facility;
(D) Customer-sited generation, demand-response, energy
efficiency or peak demand reduction capabilities, whether new or
existing, that the customer commits for integration into the
electric utility's demand-response, energy efficiency or peak
demand reduction programs; or
(E) Infrastructure and modernization projects that help
promote energy efficiency, reduce energy losses or shift load from
periods of higher demand to periods of lower demand, including the
modernization of metering and communications (also known as "smart
grid"), distribution automation, energy storage, distributed energy
resources and investments to promote the electrification of
transportation.
(10) "Greenhouse gas emission reduction or offset project"
means a project to reduce or offset greenhouse gas emissions from
sources in this state other than the electric utility's own
generating and energy delivery operations. Greenhouse gas emission
reduction or offset projects include, but are not limited to:
(A) Methane capture and destruction from landfills, coal mines
or farms;
(B) Forestation, afforestation or reforestation; and
(C) Nitrous oxide or carbon dioxide sequestration through
reduced fertilizer use or no-till farming.
(11) "Net metering" means measuring the difference between
electricity supplied by an electric utility and electricity
generated from an alternative or renewable energy resource facility
owned or operated by an electric retail customer when any portion
of the electricity generated from the alternative or renewable
energy resource facility is used to offset part or all of the
electric retail customer's requirements for electricity.
(12) "Reclaimed surface mine" means a surface mine, as that
term is defined in section three, article three, chapter twenty-two
of this code, that is reclaimed or is being reclaimed in accordance
with state or federal law.
(13) "Renewable energy resource" means any of the following
resources, methods, projects or technologies for the production or
generation of electricity:
(A) Solar photovoltaic or other solar electric energy;
(B) Solar thermal energy;
(C) Wind power;
(D) Run of river hydropower;
(E) Geothermal energy, which means a technology by which
electricity is produced by extracting hot water or steam from
geothermal reserves in the earth's crust to power steam turbines
that drive generators to produce electricity;
(F) Biomass energy, which means a technology by which
electricity is produced from a nonhazardous organic material that
is available on a renewable or recurring basis, including pulp mill sludge;
(G) Biologically derived fuel including methane gas, ethanol
not produced from corn, or biodiesel fuel;
(H) Fuel cell technology, which means any electrochemical
device that converts chemical energy in a hydrogen-rich fuel
directly into electricity, heat and water without combustion;
and
(I) Any other resource, method, project or technology
certified by the commission as a renewable energy resource;
and
(J) Electricity or equivalent mechanical energy extracted from
a pressure drop in any gas, excluding any pressure drop to a
condenser that subsequently vents the resulting heat.
(14) "Renewable energy resource facility" means a facility or
equipment that generates electricity from renewable energy
resources.
(15) "Waste coal" means a technology by which electricity is
produced by the combustion of the by-product, waste or residue
created from processing coal (such as gob).
NOTE: The purpose of this bill is to change the definitions of
renewable energy resource and recycled energy.
Strike-throughs indicate language that would be stricken from
the present law, and underscoring indicates new language that would
be added