Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Energy Council 50th topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Senate Finance advances resolution honoring Energy Council on 50th anniversary
Summary
The Senate Finance Committee advanced Senate Joint Resolution 17 recognizing the Energy Council’s five decades of interjurisdictional work on energy policy; the resolution carries a zero fiscal note and will move to the next referral.
The Senate Finance Committee on May 5 advanced Senate Joint Resolution 17, a joint resolution honoring the Energy Council on its 50th anniversary, and moved the measure to the next committee referral with a zero fiscal note.
Senator Bert Stedman, who introduced the resolution and has served as the council’s chair twice, told the committee the Energy Council provides a nonpartisan forum for state and provincial legislators to coordinate energy policy across production, distribution and grid interconnection. “Energy policy is driven by the states, not by the feds,” Stedman said.
The resolution recognizes the council’s work since its 1975 founding and notes membership growth from an initial five states to multiple U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. Stedman told senators the group uses university and national-lab expertise to prepare science-based policy positions and to track developments in technology and markets. He cited past examples in which council briefings prompted state officials to update assumptions about shale and fracking and said the council has discussed oil-spill response and microbial remediation in Arctic and Gulf waters.
Stedman described the council’s current focus areas as including smaller nuclear reactors and battery technologies, and said renewable generation has grown several-fold over the last two decades, increasing the need for grid integration work across multiple interconnections.
The resolution also notes the Energy Council will hold its 50th-anniversary meeting in Anchorage in September; Stedman invited legislators to attend. Margo Youngberg, staff to Senator Stedman, introduced the resolution at the committee table.
Chairman Hoffman opened and closed public testimony on the resolution with no members of the public offering comments. Senator Keel reported a zero fiscal note for S.J.R. 17 before the committee moved the measure forward by unanimous consent.
The committee’s action was procedural: it reported the joint resolution out of committee for further referral rather than adopting policy changes in statute.
