Hydro licensing reforms among APPA core priorities for energy bill
Reforming the cumbersome hydro licensing process is among the core priorities for the American Public Power Association (APPA) as it looks ahead to the fall when the House and Senate are expected to begin hammering out differences over comprehensive energy legislation.
The licensing of a new hydropower facility or the re-licensing of an existing hydropower project has environmental benefits in that hydroelectric power is a clean and renewable fuel source. The APPA, however, said that it can take up to 10 years or more to complete the hydropower licensing process.
“We have a fair number of members who generate power from hydropower, and the issue is that the licensing process is incredibly onerous,” Desmarie Waterhouse, the APPA’s vice president of government relations and counsel, said in a recent interview with Daily Energy Insider. “Commonsense changes need to be made to streamline the process and to speed it up.”
The Senate approved a motion in July to hold its first formal conference with the House on major energy legislation in more than a decade with the intention of signing a bill into law by the end of the year. The Senate approved its wide-ranging Energy Policy Modernization Act in April, while the House approved its version of the energy bill in May.
Waterhouse said that there is a “decent chance” that a hydropower provision will ultimately be included in the House and Senate conference report.
Hydropower supplied six percent of U.S. electricity generation in 2015, and is expected to expand its role among the nation’s renewable energy sources going forward.
A recent U.S. Department of Energy report found that hydropower in the United States could grow from 101 gigawatts (GW) to approximately 150 GW of combined electricity generation and storage capacity by 2050. The report also found that between today and 2050, hydropower could save $209 billion from avoided damages from greenhouse gas emissions.
Among other issues, the APPA supports repealing Section 433 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that requires all new federal buildings and those undergoing major renovations to eliminate their use of fossil fuel-generated energy by 2030.
The association also is in favor of language that would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission the ability to review the potential reliability impact of major federal regulations, and is supportive of streamlining the review process for permitting for interstate natural gas pipelines.
Additionally, the APPA supports language in any energy bill promoting better vegetation management along electric transmission and distribution lines on rights-of-way located on federal land.
“What we heard from our members is that this is an incredibly tedious process,” Waterhouse said. “We need to do vegetation management to potentially prevent an outage from a tree limb falling on a line.”
Vegetation management also protects against power line-caused wildfires, but the APPA has said that in some cases federal land managers apply inconsistent policies to vegetation management requests.
Strengthening technical education for high-skilled jobs in critical industries is another advocacy area for the APPA.
“Workforce development issues are very important to the utility industry,” Waterhouse said.
Technological advances and an aging workforce pose a challenge to recruiting and training skilled personnel in the electric utility sector. Smaller public power systems face even greater challenges with recruitment and training than larger investor-owned utilities with greater resources.
The APPA has therefore urged Congress to ensure the eligibility of local governmental entities in the workforce activities anticipated under any workforce development legislation.
The APPA is the service organization for the nation’s more than 2,000 community-owned electric utilities.
