{"id":20833,"date":"2017-02-23T12:30:42","date_gmt":"2017-02-23T18:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=20833"},"modified":"2017-02-23T12:30:42","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T18:30:42","slug":"community-solar-project-grants-proposed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=20833","title":{"rendered":"Community solar project grants proposed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nebraska communities could apply for a state grant to build solar energy projects under a bill heard by the Natural Resources Committee Feb. 22.

\"Sen.
Sen. Rick Kolowski<\/figcaption><\/figure> <\/p>\n

LB610, sponsored by Omaha Sen. Rick Kolowski, would allow public power districts, nonprofit organizations or political subdivisions to apply for grants from the Nebraska Environmental Trust to help pay for community solar projects. The grants would cover up to 25 percent of a project\u2019s cost. <\/p>\n

Kolowski said Lincoln Electric System\u2019s community solar facility is a good example of a project that could be built using the proposed grants. <\/p>\n

\u201cSolar projects can keep energy dollars in Nebraska, provide jobs and solar power, and can be easily scaled to the desired need and provide power at peak times,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

A community solar project would be defined as a solar electric generation facility that has an agreement to sell its electricity to an electric utility or political subdivision and allows subscribers to receive bill credits in proportion to the amount of energy they generate.<\/p>\n

Laverne Thraen of Omaha testified in support of the bill. He said building more private solar generating facilities would benefit the state by allowing public utilities to shut down coal-fired and nuclear plants that pollute the state\u2019s land and rivers. Utilities then could focus on maintaining the state\u2019s electric grid and customers could choose to buy electricity from cleaner sources. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe solution moving forward is getting our public utilities out of generating power because they\u2019ve done a very poor job of it for 50 years,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Testifying in opposition to the bill was Dan Schmid of Dwight. He said the Nebraska Environmental Trust was established to conserve the state\u2019s environment, including its air, land and water.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe extracting funds from this trust for solar power development violates the original intent of this Nebraska statute,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Kristen Gottschalk, testifying on behalf of the Nebraska Rural Electric Association, provided neutral testimony. She said LB610, as written, would allow community solar projects to sell electricity to political subdivisions when only public utilities currently are allowed to sell electricity in the state.<\/p>\n

The committee took no immediate action on the bill. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nebraska communities could apply for a state grant to build solar energy projects under a bill heard by the Natural Resources Committee Feb. 22.<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[68],"class_list":["post-20833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natural-resources","tag-sen-rick-kolowski"],"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\/20833","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=20833"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20835,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20833\/revisions\/20835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}