ALEC Trojan Horse - The Electricity Freedom Act

The nutty, fact-free right-wing Republican attack on renewable energy continues at full force at the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Spring Task Force Summit in Charlotte, NC. ALEC is a corporate-funded organization of conservative state legislators from around the country that crafts model legislation serving big business interests. ALEC members go home and introduce those model bills into their state legislatures.

ALEC’s Pennsylvania members include Republican House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (whose participation in ALEC is paid by state taxpayers), House Caucus Administrator Dick Stevenson, House Judiciary Chair Ronald Marsico, House State Government Chair Daryl Metcalfe, Senate Majority Caucus Secretary Robert Robbins, and Senate Judiciary Chair Stewart Greenleaf.

One piece of model legislation that will be included in the members’ packets is something called the “Electricity Freedom Act.” Here’s a summary of the bill, “The Electricity Freedom Act repeals the State of {insert state}’s requirement that electric distribution utilities and electric services companies provide _____ percent of their electricity supplies from renewable energy sources by ____.” In our case that would be Pennsylvania’s landmark 2004 Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act (AEPS) which requires 18 percent of our electricity to come from alternative resources, including 8 percent from renewable resources like wind and solar. The AEPS created wind and solar industries in Pennsylvania that have built 17 wind project that produce enough electricity to power about a quarter million homes and 6,000 solar projects.

Another bill in the packet is the “Intrastate Coal and Use Act” that has already been introduced in West Virginia. According to the Freedom Legislative Forum, the act is designed to “save energy states from federal overregulation.” The Forum lists Pennsylvania as one of the states “well-situated” for introduction of the act.  

ALEC was also represented at a meeting in February between fossil-fuel funded advocacy groups and local anti-wind organizations that laid out a public relations campaign to kill wind energy. Proposed campaign tactics include setting up dummy businesses threatening to erect 400-foot billboards and steering children away from doing science projects on wind energy. There were at least two representatives from Pennsylvania at the meeting. You can see the proposed campaign here.

Fortunately, because of strong public and bi-partisan support for renewable energy among Pennsylvania legislators, this war on renewables has not yet gained traction here. However, renewable energy businesses and advocates need to keep a lookout for introduction of the “Electricity Freedom Act,” and dummy businesses proposing to erect 400-foot billboards.