Lawmakers gave first-round approval March 20 to a bill that would fund an electricity transmission study to be conducted by the Nebraska Power Review Board.<\/p>\n
LB1115, introduced by Hyannis Sen. Al Davis, would appropriate $200,000 from the General Fund to study existing and future state, regional and national transmission infrastructure and policy in the state.<\/p>\n
Davis said the study would help the state learn to maximize the state\u2019s potential for exporting electricity.<\/p>\n
\u201cNebraska has a significant opportunity to export electricity to other states,\u201d he said. \u201c[This bill] would ensure Nebraska\u2019s potential future as a significant supplier in the national electricity market.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bill also would establish a working group, including five members of the Legislature, which would provide input to the board. A report detailing the results of the study would be provided by the board to the governor by Dec. 15, 2014.<\/p>\n
Holdrege Sen. Tom Carlson supported the bill, saying Nebraska currently has excess energy that could be put to better use.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have wonderful wind energy potential, so we should research how to export it,\u201d he said. \u201cThe question is: Where is the market and how can we take advantage of the market? I think that justifies [investing money] to fund a study by a professional consultant to identify potential markets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following the adoption of a technical amendment, senators advanced the bill to select file on a 30-1 vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lawmakers gave first-round approval March 20 to a bill that would fund an electricity transmission study to be conducted by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[77],"class_list":["post-15190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natural-resources","tag-sen-al-davis"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15191,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15190\/revisions\/15191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}