Doyle on green mandates: 'Good public policy matters'

From a blog post by Tom Content on JSonline:

Clean-energy policies such as the federal energy and climate bill and a state climate bill are needed to help open doors for clean-tech entrepreneurs and prod other companies to invest in cleaner energy technologies, Gov. Jim Doyle said Wednesday.

Speaking at an energy forum in Saginaw, Mich. led by the Obama administration, Doyle referred to the biomass power plant announced Tuesday by We Energies as a project that wouldn’t have happened without the state law that requires utilities to buy more green power.

“They’re doing this because they’ve got a renewable power standard that they have to meet in a couple of years and they are really trying to figure out how they are going to do it. So good public policy matters,” Doyle said.

Under Doyle, and with bipartisan support, the state enacted a law several years ago requiring that 10% of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2015.

Doyle is now pushing for the state to expand that requirement – to 25% of the state’s energy supply by 2025 – as part of a global warming bill that his office and co-chairs of several legislative committees have been working on. The bill is based on the recommendations of the governor's global warming task force last year.

That bill is likely to be introduced next month, said Pat Henderson, deputy secretary of the state Department of Natural Resources, in an interview.

During a telephone call with Wisconsin reporters, Doyle said he was optimistic the bill would pass either late this year or early next year. The state bill is still needed, he said, even if a federal bill that would enact a nationwide cap-and-trade system is passed.

Posted in: Renewable energy