Recognizing the benefits that small-scale and locally-owned wind projects can have, in 2005 Minnesota lawmakers enacted legislation requiring all of the state’s electric utilities to establish Community Based Energy Development (C-BED) tariffs. The key aspect of the C-BED tariff is higher payments in the first 10 years of a power purchase contract. The only other state to enact such a law as of 2009 is Nebraska.
More Information:
- Wind and Ethanol: Economies and Diseconomies of Scale This August 2007 report finds that there are indeed small cost reductions from very large scale, absentee owned renewable energy facilities. But that these are overshadowed by the significant loss in potential economic benefits from locally owned and more modestly scaled facilities.
- C-BED Web Site – organization promoting the concept.
Community Based Energy Development (C-BED) Tariffs – Minnesota
Encouraging Community Owned Energy Systems
Because customer-owned utilities are democratic and locally controlled, and service rather than profit oriented, we should encourage their formation. In today's topsy-turvy electricity world, states should encourage the formation not only of customer-owned distribution utilities, but public transmission utilities and generation utilities as well.
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