On June 29, 2004 Rhode Island’s Governor Donald Carcieri signed into law legislation establishing a renewable energy standard. (House Bill 7375, sub A as amended).

Renewable Energy Requirements
Under the new law, eligible renewable energy resources must make up at least 3% of each supplier’s retail energy sales to end-use customers in Rhode Island by year 2007. The required amount of renewable energy resources increases by .5% each year until 2010; by an additional 1% through 2014; and by an additional 1.5% to 2020. Existing renewable resources may not exceed 2% of the new renewable energy requirement. Alternatively, a supplier may choose to pay $50.00 per megawatt-hour of the renewable energy obligation to the newly created Renewable Energy Development Fund.

Eligible Resources
Eligible resources must be located within the New England Power Pool (NEPOOL) region or receive confirmation from ISO-New England and the North American Reliability Council that the renewable energy was actually delivered into NEPOOL for consumption by New England customers. Allowable renewable resources include the following: direct solar radiation; wind power; movement of latent heat of the ocean; heat of the earth; small hydro facilities; biomass facilities; and certain fuel cells and waste to energy units using eligible biomass fuels.

Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission
The program will be overseen by the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission (Commission). The Commission is authorized to approve rate recovery for the incremental costs of compliance, including alternative compliance payments, the cost of maintaining a system of identifying generation attributes and compliance certificates (NE-GIS) and the purchase of such NE-GIS certificates. The Commission must also find that there are potentially adequate renewable resources to meet the specified targets for year 2011 and out, before those target amounts are imposed on suppliers.

The Commission may sanction suppliers for compliance failures. Such sanctions may include revocation of a generator’s certification as a renewable energy supplier. To aid in monitoring compliance, the Commission is required to establish and enforce energy source disclosure regulations.

Effective Date
The act is effective immediately upon passage, though the first compliance year is 2007.

Robert A. Olson is a partner in the law firm of Brown, Olson & Gould P.C. which maintains a nationwide practice in energy law, public utility law and related commercial transactions. He can be reached at:

Brown, Olson & Gould, PC
2 Delta Drive, Suite 301
Concord, NH 03301

rolson@bowlaw.com | (603) 225-9716