Ogden opts to take part in renewable energy program, joining 6 other Utah locales

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Ogden officials voted to join six other Utah communities in the Community Clean Energy Program.
• The program, in cooperation with Rocky Mountain Power, aims to bolster use of renewable energy in participating locales.
• Residential customers in participating communities who take part will pay an extra $4 on their monthly power bills to finance the initiative.

OGDEN — Ogden officials agreed Tuesday to take part in the Community Clean Energy Program, becoming the seventh Utah community to agree to participate.

The program, an initiative with Rocky Mountain Power, aims to bolster the use of renewable energy in participating communities. Twelve more Utah locales have yet to decide whether they'll take part, and they have until June 2 to act.

On signing up for service from Rocky Mountain Power, company reps "didn't ask if you want coal or gas — you just got what they delivered to you," said Ogden City Councilman Dave Graf, who voted for the measure. "And here we've got an opportunity to say yes to something that's sustainable and something that doesn't get pinched in international conflict and politics."

The Ogden City Council voted 6-1 for the measure, with the other 12 communities to decide whether to participate in the coming weeks. Glade Sowards, senior energy and climate program manager in the Salt Lake City Sustainability Department and a point person for the program, said Ogden joins Springdale, Summit County, Salt Lake City, Emigration Canyon, Moab and Park City in opting to take part in the program.

The seven locales account for around 74% of energy consumption among the 19 locales that have debated taking part, he said, which should be sufficient for the program to move forward, though he hopes more communities opt in. "I would say we have critical mass to move forward," Sowards said.

The renewable energy initiative, contemplated in 2019 legislation, HB411, has been a focus of years of debate and fine-tuning. Under its parameters, residential Rocky Mountain Power customers in participating communities would pay an extra $4 per month on their power bills, and the funds would be pooled to help finance the development of renewable energy resources to serve those locales. Nonresidential users would pay an additional monthly rate based primarily on energy usage.

The initial goal was to achieve the sole use of renewable energy resources in the participating communities by 2030, according to Lorenzo Long, Ogden's sustainability coordinator. That date, though, "is no longer one of the hard-and-fast requirements," even if it remains aspirational.

Participation allows Ogden and the other communities involved to meet their energy needs "while still keeping power reliable and accessible and (promoting) air quality improvements across Utah for generations," Long told Ogden officials on Tuesday.

Sowards stressed that initial funding from the extra fees power users pay would be tapped to cover the costs of creating the administration at Rocky Mountain Power needed to run the program. Funds would also be placed in reserve. Still, he hopes a power purchase agreement to acquire the first new batch of renewable energy could be completed and submitted for regulatory approval by this coming fall.

"We're thinking a commercial operation date of maybe 2028, 2029," he said.

Rocky Mountain Power will start sending notices to power customers in participating communities around November, advising them of the new fee that will appear on their bills to finance the program. The fee will actually appear on bills starting in early 2027.

Customers will be able to opt out if they don't want to take part. If they opt out before the fee appears on their bills or within the first four months of being billed, they won't face an extra charge. After that, though, they'd face a $30 termination fee to opt out, according to Long.

Ogden City Councilman Rich Hyer voted against taking part in the program at Tuesday's meeting, in part because of the opt-out provision. If the program is as great as boosters say it is, he says, customers should have to actively opt in, not be required to take steps to opt out if they're not interested.

Program proponents "are relying on a section of the population that just will never notice," Hyer said. "Maybe they would have signed up, maybe they wouldn't. But nobody will ever know."

Ogden officials plan to conduct an educational campaign to advise the public when the time comes about the program and the opt-out provision, he said.

The 12 communities that still have to decide whether to take part in the renewable energy program are are Alta; Castle Valley, Grand County; Coalville; Cottonwood Heights; Francis, Summit County; Grand County; Holladay; Kearns; Midvale; Millcreek; Oakley, Summit County, and Salt Lake County.

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.

Related topics

UtahEnvironmentWeber CountySalt Lake CountyPolitics

Tim Vandenack

• 

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.