Don Nickles: “We didn't reduce the renewable portfolio standard. It is still 10 percent. I don't think it should be there, but my…”

“We didn't reduce the renewable portfolio standard. It is still 10 percent. I don't think it should be there, but my decision was to minimize the damage under the Bingaman proposal, and we decided to cut the penalty in half, the same amount the Clinton administration proposed--the only proposal that had a hearing before Congress, and that happened to be a hearing not before this Congress but the last Congress in 1999. To think we would even have a proposal that has an indirect tax on utility users and consumers of billions of dollars, estimated by the Energy Information Agency of $88 billion, without even having a hearing, I find ridiculous. I hear colleagues say it was based on Texas, and it was not; there is a world of difference between capacity and generated electricity, especially when you talk about renewables. Texas has a standard that would equal 2 percent of their generation, and we are talking about a 10 percent mandate. There is a lot of difference. There is a lot of difference when the cost impact is in the millions and billions of dollars for utilities all across the country.”