By Daniel J. Chacón
The Santa Fe New Mexican
A bill designed to give cities and counties in New Mexico control over who supplies their energy cleared the Senate Conservation Committee Thursday despite stiff opposition from the business community and the state’s largest utility.
But Senate Bill 165 faces a tough test at its next stop: the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Joe Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, who chairs the judiciary committee, said the so-called Local Choice Energy Act needs a rewrite.
Cervantes, a member of the Senate Conservation Committee, said the bill is “full of ambiguities and inconsistencies” and “full of things that are not really laws” but aspirations.
“We have very different procedures and processes in judiciary, and we’re more than willing to spend days and weeks and hours doing the work that this bill would require to be, candidly, largely rewritten from where it’s at right now,” he said. “There are just so many ambiguities.”
Advocates of the bill say it would empower cities, counties and tribes to generate or purchase renewable electricity and sell it to residents within their jurisdictions.
“The electricity will be transmitted over the existing grid in partnership with the existing utility for the same fees they charge their customers,” said Sen. Carrie Hamblen, D-Las Cruces, who is sponsoring the bill. “This is a proven policy that exists in 10 different states serving millions of Americans in more than 1,300 communities. Local choice energy providers have proven to offer safe, reliable electricity that frequently exceeds state renewable portfolio standards.”
Among those testifying in support of the bill were State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard, who called the bill “transformative.”
“If you look at some of the landmark climate issues that this body has looked at over the past few sessions — community solar, the [Energy Transition Act] — they started out much like this one with lots of folks coming to gripe and complain about certain aspects of the bill,” she said. “But they got better as they went along, and I believe that this one will be the same.”
Other supporters of the bill include the Coalition of Sustainable Communities, the New Mexico Solar Energy Association and the Center for Biological Diversity.
The New Mexico Chamber of Commerce, the New Mexico Rural Cooperative Association, the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce and Public Service Company of New Mexico were among the opponents. Laura Sanchez, executive director of PNM’s Government and Public Affairs Department, gave three reasons for opposing the bill: reliability; impact to customers, specifically low-income customers in rural communities; and the Energy Transition Act, which is designed to move the state’s electric utilities from coal to renewables and zero-carbon resources by 2045.
“This is really an approach towards deregulation,” she said. “If that’s the conversation policywise that this body wants to take, I think that’s something you can do, but to do it piecemeal through a bill like this has serious ramifications.”
Sanchez said local choice providers would be required to file plans but wouldn’t be subject to ongoing oversight by the Public Regulation Commission.
“We all remember what happened to Texas in 2021 when they suffered a winter storm and created the worst outages in that state,” she said. “That’s a deregulated, decentralized system and … the main reason that they suffered that problem in 2021 was because of generation shortages.”
New Mexico could face similar problems if the bill becomes law, Sanchez warned.
“A lot of local energy providers will have to figure out how to purchase energy on the market and therefore face a generation problem,” she said.
Follow Daniel J. Chacón on Twitter @danieljchacon.