Officials from WPPI Energy, SMUD, and the Tennessee Valley Public Power Association on Feb. 28 detailed strategies they have adopted for communicating with lawmakers and outlined key policy priorities they discussed with House members and Senators in their visits to Capitol Hill as part of the American Public Power Association’s Legislative Rally.
The Rally was held in Washington, D.C., from Feb. 26 to Feb. 28. Among other things, the Rally gives public power officials the opportunity to meet with their representatives and senators, as well as congressional staff, to communicate public power’s priorities.
On the final day of the Rally, Scott Corwin, President and CEO of APPA, served as a moderator for a discussion that included Danette Scudder, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Tennessee Valley Public Power Association, Larry Luong, Federal Affairs Manager at SMUD, a California public power utility, and Joseph Owen, Director of Government Affairs at WPPI Energy.
Scudder noted that as part of Rally activities, TVPPA partnered with the Tennessee Municipal Electric Power Association.
She said that in meeting with lawmakers, discussions revolved around, among other things, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency greenhouse gas regulations, supply chain challenges, and the Tennessee Valley Authority’s regulatory authority.
Scudder also noted that TVPPA specifically reached out to senators on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee who are not from the Tennessee Valley delegation. “The real emphasis there is relationship building,” she said.
“The approach we’ve been taking – especially with those outside of our delegation – is to raise awareness,” she said, noting in particular that TVPPA has focused on TVA board nominees in the context of communicating with members of Congress.
TVPPA is the nonprofit, regional service organization that represents the interests of consumer-owned electric utilities operating within the Tennessee Valley Authority service area. TVPPA members include both municipal and electric cooperatives, and they serve more than 9 million people in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia.
“We have a lot going on in Northern California,” Luong noted. “Every time SMUD meets with delegation members, we spend a little time bringing them up to speed on all things that we’re working on which includes details on the utility’s operations, as well as federal activities such as grants and federal partnerships “so that we can continue transitioning our grid to low carbon.”
He explained that SMUD has a zero-carbon plan that aims to reach absolute zero carbon emissions by 2030.
“We are constantly going after federal dollars to upgrade our grid,” Luong noted.
In 2023, SMUD was awarded a $50 million grant from the Department of Energy through its Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) Program. The utility which serves approximately 650,000 meters is contributing over $100 million toward its Connected Clean PowerCity® project encompassing next generation smart grid infrastructure and grid intelligence capabilities that will allow SMUD’s customers to participate in the clean energy transition. SMUD’s technology-enhancing projects seek to accelerate integration of the following components over the next five years.
In 2024, the utility is pursuing additional GRIP grant funding to rebuild one its bulk substations and transition the utility’s natural gas plants to burn hydrogen. The utility is partnering with Calpine on a DOE-funded project to demonstrate utility-scale carbon capture and sequestration.
He noted that SMUD has also conveyed to lawmakers the “struggles that we have with distribution transformers and the issues that we have with transmission development.”
As for strategies for communicating with lawmakers, Luong said that regardless of the lawmaker’s political affiliation, “SMUD is always couching our message around the customer because at the end of the day, their constituents are SMUD’s customers.
WPPI Energy’s Owen said that “the supply chain is hitting all of us. We know that there aren’t necessarily silver bullets to fix that right away.”
But highlighting the challenges “we’re having procuring distribution transformers – some of the delays that those are causing in the communities that we serve – is really important for members of Congress to hear,” he said. “Those messages have been pretty well received.”
In addition, Owen said that public power continues to communicate to Congress the negative impact of no longer having access to advance refunding bonds.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 eliminated the ability to issue advance refunding bonds. APPA strongly supports enactment of legislation to reinstate advance refunding bonds.
Owen also noted that WPPI Energy has detailed for lawmakers how it is challenging to craft long-term plans when climate policy is centered around administrations, rather than congressional action.
“We have been talking about how our preference is some form of climate policy that takes into account reliability and affordability [and] sustainability, but it’s passed through Congress rather than easily overturned by courts, depending on what administration is in office,” he said.
As for strategies for communicating with lawmakers, “we always like to say that some of the most effective lobbyists are local elected officials,” Owen said. When a member of Congress is hearing from a mayor who is also a constituent who can detail some of the community’s challenges “that is impactful and I think that resonates really well with elected officials, whether they’re state or federal.”
WPPI Energy is a joint action agency that serves 51 locally owned utilities in Wisconsin, Iowa and Upper Michigan.
Details on Resolutions Passed at Legislative Rally
At the Rally, APPA’s Legislative & Resolutions Committee on Feb. 27 approved 13 policy resolutions. These member-sponsored resolutions will guide APPA’s advocacy efforts in 2024 and beyond.
Among other topics, the committee members approved resolutions related to nuclear fuel storage and support for a reliable and affordable supply of natural gas. They also approved a resolution in support of electric reliability and a resolution in support of reasonable reliability standards.
Other resolutions were passed in support of:
- The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program
- Protecting Critical Electric Information from Public Disclosure
- Energy Efficiency
- Flexible Clean Hydrogen Credits
- Nuclear Power and an Efficient and Effective Nuclear Regulatory Commission
- Modernizing the Columbia River Treaty, Preparing for Changes to Flood Control Operations, and Reducing U.S. Power Obligations to Canada
- The Fire Safe Electrical Corridors Act
- Risk-Based Grid Security Standards
The committee members also passed a resolution addressing cybersecurity incident reporting for electric utilities.
