Courtesy of RENEW Wisconsin
As a Democratic governor dealing with a Republican-controlled Legislature, Tony Evers has seen his will thwarted many times since taking office in 2019.
One way, however, that he has been able to exert influence has been through his appointment to various state agencies and bodies. Among the latest organizations to move in his direction is the Public Service Commission, which oversees utilities throughout the state. Evers’ naming of Tyler Huebner to the commission in March marks the first time in years that the PSC has not been under the control of people appointed by Evers’ predecessor, Scott Walker.
It’s also the first time in two decades that an engineer—Huebner attended the University of Iowa for his bachelor’s degree and Stanford for his master’s—will be on the commission. His two fellow commissioners are far more typical. The PSC chairwoman, Rebecca Valcq, is a lawyer appointed by Evers is January 2019; and Ellen Nowak, also a lawyer and the only Walker appointee now on the board, recently returned to the PSC after a stint running the state’s Department of Administration.
Far more important for proponents of wind and solar energy are Huebner’s credentials as an advocate for renewable energy. For nearly seven years before joining the PSC, Huebner had been executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a nonprofit group devoted to pushing for the widespread use of solar and wind generation and similar technologies.
Supporting Solar
The time was particularly fraught for supporters of renewable energy. More than once while Huebner was overseeing RENEW, We Energies and other large utilities sought to impose various charges and rate increases that Huebner and his fellow advocates saw as being punitive toward homeowners or businesses that had installed solar panels or similar equipment. With Huebner at the helm, RENEW was able to work with likeminded groups to hold those attempts in check.
Many utilities have now ceased to regard solar and wind power as outright threats and have instead made plans to invest heavily in renewable energy themselves. We Energies, for instance, has entered into a deal with two other large utilities—Madison Gas & Electric and Wisconsin Public Service Corp.—to acquire the ownership rights to the Badger Hollow Farm, a 300 megawatt project that will be largest of its kind in this state when completed. We Energies has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by 80% below their 2005 level by 2050.
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With such a track record, Huebner has renewable-energy proponents eager to see more of the same.
“I think Tyler, from our perspective, is a pretty pragmatic guy,” said Scott Coenen, executive director of the Wisconsin Conservative Energy Forum, a group that makes free-market arguments in favor of renewable energy. “There is an opportunity, with changing energy markets and a resurgence of cheap renewables, for Wisconsin to could take a middle-of-the-road and pragmatic approach at the PSC.”
Balancing Costs
Most observers also recognize, though, that there is a big difference between Huebner’s former and current roles. At RENEW, his job was simply to tout the benefits of renewable energy. As a commissioner at the PSC, he’ll have to serve a myriad of often competing interests. More than he ever had to do at RENEW, he’ll have to find a way to balance the promised environmental benefits of solar and wind projects against the likely cost to ratepayers and utilities.
Huebner himself acknowledges he has much to learn. One of the first big matters he’ll most likely have to weigh in on will have scarcely anything to do with renewable energy. Amid the coronavirus outbreak, utilities have been told to continue providing power to low-income customers, even if those people—because of job losses or other hardships—can no longer pay. Eventually, there will have to be a reckoning, likely by spreading at least some of the costs over ratepayers.
As befits a member of the PSC, Huebner is otherwise reluctant to talk of specific policy preferences. His past positions, though, are well known.
As executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, he was an open and vocal champion of arrangements like third-party ownership, which essentially allows homeowners or businesses to avoid steep installation costs by leasing solar arrays from developers and then using their energy savings to pay for the equipment over a set number of years. We Energies and other large utilities have questioned the legality of third-party ownership; at RENEW, Huebner was among those calling on the Legislature to step in and clear up the doubt.
Coming Together Over the Future
Also a top priority for Huebner has been the rates utilities charge for renewable generation. We Energies and other big companies have long contended that wind and solar customers should pay more to cover costs associated with the additional burden their generation activities places on the electrical grid. In his former position, Huebner had argued that renewable customers should also be receiving credit for providing cheap power at times when electricity from standards sources is often most expense—at 3 p.m. on the hottest day of the year, say.
Of course, joining the PSC has not meant Huebner has lost sight of the benefits of renewable projects. At a recent meeting, he and his fellow commissioners gave unanimous approval to plans for the construction of a $16.8 million, 9-megawatt solar array at the Dane Count Airport.
“We know that wind farms and solar farms are the most cost-effective energy source for peak capacity needs for utilities,” Huebner said. “Knowing how cost effective has helped to depoliticize the industry.”
With the cost of solar power having decreased by as much as 90 percent over the past decade, according to some estimates, the debate over the technology tends less and less now to pit climate-change believers against deniers. The more pressing questions instead have to do with how to pay for replacing coal-fired power plants that in many cases were meant to last for decades more.
Tom Content, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, said a glimpse of the industry’s future could be seen in his group’s fight to ensure utility customers were being treated fairly when We Energies decided to close down its coal-fired power plant in Pleasant Prairie in 2018. On one hand, power customers stood to benefit from the utility’s decision to replace the dirty coal burner with cleaner, and increasingly cheaper, sources of energy. On the other, they were still on the hook for paying for the construction of the Pleasant Prairie plant, which was originally planned to operate for decades more. CUB ultimately worked out a deal with the PSC allowing some of the plant’s costs to refinanced, softening the blow for ratepayers while ensuring We Energies was compensated.
As people of all political stripes come to see the benefits of renewable energy, Content said, these are the sort of predicaments that will be appearing with ever-greater frequency before the PSC. With Huebner helping to make the decisions, he said, the state should be in good hands.
“If everybody is going to go clean, we want to make sure it’s done in the right way,” Content said, “in a way that protects small customers in terms of rates and makes sure they can take advantage of these new technologies.”
