The six-page amendment filed 02/17/2011 @ 10:24 am by Sen. Beverly Gard (R-Greenfield) on SB 251 the so-called Clean Energy Bill is confusing at best.

It is next to impossible to understand the impact of this proposed amendment without matching up the amendment with the February 8, 2011 printed version of the bill.

It is true that page one of the proposed amendment amends IC 8-1-8.8-10 and deletes a laundry list of technologies defined as "renewable energy resources". Why this is being done in this amendment is as clear as mud to me right now. Two other bills, SB 66 and HB 1128, have been moving through this session of the Indiana General Assembly amending this section of the law. I was told by an informed source that some of the language in this amendment was suggested by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) but that doesn't make sense to me because the Commission's proposed new net metering regulations references this definition of "renewable energy resources" so why would they propose to delete it?

Does the right hand know what the left hand is doing?

There is another laundry list of "clean energy resources" which does include wind, solar, biomass, hydropower, hydrogen, algae, and geothermal in a new Chapter 37 creating a Clean Energy Portfolio Standard Program.

Again, I was told yesterday that a proposed amendment would create two buckets under this "VOLUNTARY" Clean Energy Portfolio Standard Program--one for true renewables and another for nuclear and coal. 

I guess I will just try to sit tight and listen to the explanation from the microphone IF SB 251 is called down for second reading this afternoon.

P.S. The Senate is on SB 217 right now on the Second Reading Calendar. There are two more bills--SB 222 and SB 240--before SB 251.