Renewable Energy Is Renewable Energy: Let's Level The Playing Field -- Not a Bakken Story

Link here.

• Montana lawmakers are considering a bill that would make it easier for utilities to meet the standard for renewable energy production.
• The measure would allow electricity produced by large hydroelectric facilities to count toward state renewable resource requirements.
• Montana utilities are required to procure 10 percent of their retail electricity sales from renewable resources. That jumps to 15 percent in 2015.
• State law now counts only smaller hydroelectric facilities of 10 megawatts or less toward those requirements.  This new bill would make all existing dams and hydroelectric facilities eligible renewable energy resources, as long as they are not federal facilities.
• About 40 percent of Montana's electricity comes from hydroelectric power, and the proposal would add approximately 1 gigawatt of existing power to the state renewable energy standard, said a spokesman.
• The bill would add so much hydroelectric power that companies required to comply with the standard would not have to develop any new resources for the next 20 years, that same spokesman added.

Yes, let's level the playing field. Renewable energy is renewable energy.

Did y'all know that 40 percent of Montana's electricity already comes from hydroelectric power? I didn't.  But now I do.