ACTION: Call your State Senator: Vote NO on LB 399. (Click here to ID your Senator, and their homepage with phone number and online contact form)

We need energy parity here in Nebraska — a process where wind, solar, coal, and pipelines are all required to have proper setbacks, local zoning, community benefit agreements, and decommissioning requirements.

But a bad bill headed to the floor of the Nebraska Legislature unfairly singles out wind and solar, taking away local control and setting clean energy projects up for rejection by a state board hand-picked and appointed by Gov. Jim Pillen.

Currently, the Nebraska “Power Review Board” — whose members are appointed by Gov. Pillen, has authority over public power investments, such as for NPPD and Omaha Public Power District (OPPD).

But LB 399 would add *private* clean power investments to the Nebraska Power Review Board’s authority, leaving our clean energy freedom in the hands of a few partisan political appointees.

LB 399 takes away local control and seeks to delay and subsequently derail clean power projects that have already navigated over 54 Federal, State, Local and Regional permits. This legislation diminishes local control by elected county and public power officials who are already empowered to regulate clean power development and act upon citizen input. These are local zoning issues. We should let the local jurisdictions make the decisions.

Renewable energy development provides $18 million in property tax relief because it grows the rural tax base and provides $17 million dollars annually in lease payments to farmers, ranchers, and other private landowners. This bill kills those opportunitites.

These are private clean energy investments, and this would be legislating private business decisions. We do not send someone wanting to spend hundreds of millions of private dollars on an office building in downtown Omaha to the state, and we should not do that here.

There is no question we need more transparency and accountablity on how energy projects are being built in our state — but LB 399 is not the answer. In fact, this bill adds to the problems of not treating energy projects on a fair and level playing field.

We need the community and landowners in the driver’s seat, not a partisan Governor-selected board.

ACTION: Call your State Senator: Vote NO on LB 399.

(Enter your street address to identify who is your Nebraska State Senator. Next, visit their homepage that includes their office telephone number to call, and online form to Submit a Comment.)

LB 399 will halt Private Investment in Renewable Energy Development in Nebraska

Bad for Business – Bad for Rate Payers – Bad for Property Tax Relief – Bad for Local Control 

Bad for Nebraska’s Economy – Bad for Public/Private Partnerships

Bad for Business

LB 399 seeks to discourage private investment in clean power for Nebraska by undoing landmark legislation enacted by the 2016 Nebraska Legislature that provided for a common sense, streamlined state regulatory process for private investment in clean power projects. That legislation unlocked more than $6 billion dollars of private investment, generating two thousand good paying jobs, providing a steady flow of $17 million in annual rural landowner income, created $18 million in annual long term property tax relief and locked in long term savings to Nebraska rate payers.

Bad for Nebraska Electric Ratepayers

Privately developed renewable energy is the cheapest form of electricity available and this bill will add time and significant risk, thereby making it more expensive. Over a third of our electricity comes from renewable energy technologies. NPPD and OPPD are seeing unprecedented load growth and making this opportunity for wholesale electricity more expensive, riskier, and slower to market will seriously damage the utilities’ ability to serve load growth.  This amendment will increase electric rates by making the cheapest form of energy more expensive.

Bad for Local Control 

LB 399 takes away local control and seeks to delay and subsequently derail clean power projects that have already navigated over 54 Federal, State, Local and Regional permits. This legislation diminishes local control by elected county and public power officials who are already empowered to regulate clean power development and act upon citizen input. These are local zoning issues. Let the local jurisdictions make the decisions.

Bad for Property Tax Relief

Renewable energy development provides $18 million in property tax relief because it grows the rural tax base by providing $17 million dollars annually in lease payments to farmers, ranchers, and other private landowners. This bill kills that opportunity. 

Bad for the Nebraska Economy

Renewable energy provides a big opportunity for export to grow our state’s economy. The Power Purchase Agreement mandate in the amendment directly kills any export, thus killing Nebraska’s competitiveness to our neighbors and the export market. We do not tell a corn grower that he must sell his corn within the borders of our state. We should not do that here.

Bad for Public Private Partnerships

The current statute incorporates federal, state, local and regional approvals and sets forth stringent guidelines for: decommissioning responsibilities, Game and Parks consultations, public power district and regional transmission organization joint transmission agreements that address construction, ownership. operation and maintenance. It makes sense for the Power Review Board to judge public power investments because those are public/ratepayer dollars.  These are private investments, and this would be legislating private business decisions.  We do not send someone wanting to spend hundreds of millions of private dollars on an office building in downtown Omaha to the state, and we should not do that here. We also do not do this for a hog farm, so why should we do it for a solar farm?

Thanks for making a call to your State Senator to VOTE NO ON LB 399.

Jane Kleeb and the Bold Nebraska team