16 Utah locales opt to take part in program meant to bolster renewable energy use

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Sixteen Utah communities have opted to join a renewable energy program, including Salt Lake City.
• Rocky Mountain Power will spearhead implementation of the program, which will cost participating residential customers $4 a month.
• The aim of the optional program is to bolster use of renewable energy.

SALT LAKE CITY — Sixteen of 19 Utah communities that were eligible to take part in a program meant to bolster use of renewable energy have opted to participate, including Salt Lake City, Ogden and Park City.

Rocky Mountain Power "can pull the trigger on program implementation," said Glade Sowards, senior energy and climate program manager for Salt Lake City. He hopes the first renewable power-generation sources funded by the initiative are online by 2028 or 2029.

Still, the process — which will lead to rate hikes of $4 a month for residential power customers with an opt-out provision — won't occur overnight. Rocky Mountain Power needs to create the administrative framework to operate the Community Clean Energy Program and formal notice needs to go to power customers in the impacted locales, among other things.

According to the preliminary timeline, subject to change, notices are to start going out by Nov. 2, with the new charge appearing on power bills after Jan. 1. A four-month period will follow — until May 1, according to the preliminary timeline — during which customers can opt out of the program without penalty. After that, residential users wanting to drop the program, thus avoiding the new charge, would have to pay a $30 termination fee.

"We're going to make it as easy as possible. We'd love for everyone to stay in the program, but we understand it's a matter of choice," Sowards said. "We want the people who remain in the program to be there because they want to be."

He expects officials in participating communities to run their own outreach efforts for the program. The participating communities, which had until June 2 to confirm their intent to take part, are Salt Lake City; Ogden; Park City; Moab; Emigration Canyon; Holladay; Midvale; Millcreek; Alta; Springdale; Castle Valley, Grand County; and Francis and Oakley in Summit County. Salt Lake, Grand and Summit counties also opted in.

Opting out were Coalville, Cottonwood Heights and Kearns.

Commercial and other non-residential customers participating would face a rate based on energy use.

Wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric

The initiative is rooted in legislation passed by Utah lawmakers in 2019, HB411, meant to bolster use of renewable energy and reduce use of carbon-based resources. Per the plan, funds generated by the $4 a month fee and the fees other power users pay would be pooled to cover the cost of developing renewable energy resources for use by the 16 cities and counties.

More customers opting to keep paying the fee will result in quicker expansion of renewable energy resources, according to Sowards. Together, the 19 cities and counties initially identified to potentially take part in the program account for about 20% of power sales in Utah.

As for installation of the new renewable capacity, Sowards said a request for proposals was put out last year in conjunction with the Utah Public Service Commission seeking solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric project possibilities within Utah, Wyoming or Idaho. That yielded a list of options that has been narrowed to a short list of finalists.

The idea is to pursue "one or two kind of smaller resources, see how our participation rates stabilize and then add additional clean resources as needed," he said. He hopes new renewable capacity is online by 2028 or 2029, though the timeline will depend on the number of customers who stick with the program and the added fee.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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UtahBusinessEnvironmentWeber CountySalt Lake CountySummit/Wasatch County

Tim Vandenack

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Tim Vandenack covers immigration, multicultural issues and Northern Utah for KSL. He worked several years for the Standard-Examiner in Ogden and has lived and reported in Mexico, Chile and along the U.S.-Mexico border.