cross-posted from Fresh Energy blog

Now that we’re nearing the legislative session’s
finish line, one question we keep hearing around the hearing rooms and
halls of the Capitol is “Is the RES causing my rates to go up?” We’ve
heard testimony from a couple rural electric cooperatives that think
the RES is negatively impacting them, while other utilities have
testified that wind is currently the lowest cost new resource, tracking
with the price of natural gas.

While the
electricity market is a complicated system with many variables, our
research and experience has led us to believe that the state RES is
not causing ratepayers to pay more and will actually save them from the
costs of constructing costly fossil fuel generation sources in the
future. And it seems to be trending that way across the country. All of
Minnesota’s utilities are on track to meet or exceed their current RES
requirements, Colorado just raised their goal from 20 percent to 30
percent by 2030, and Texas just announced that they are significantly
outpacing their modest RES and are currently the United States’ #1 wind
producer.

A few weeks ago we posted an Energy 101 explaining why the assertion that renewables are driving up rates doesn’t make economic sense. And now this morning the Star Tribune reports (from a story that originally ran on Midwest Energy News)
that the impact of the state RES on rates is negligible. In the
article, one utility said that they would buy renewables even without
the standard because they are the cheapest resource. The same utility
goes on to point out that purchasing renewable energy allows them to
avoid having to build expensive new fossil fuel generation that would
negatively impact their ratepayers.

So is the RES driving up rates?  It seems that all signs point to no.