COMMENTARY: Nevada is entering a new energy landscape

It was refreshing to see David Hurlbut’s take on the energy choice initiative, a perspective that wasn’t full of panicked hysteria or misinformation (“Promoting energy choice,” Jan. 7 Review-Journal commentary). Energy choice doesn’t have to be the end of the world. Nevada isn’t transitioning from order to chaos, but from a state-sanctioned monopoly to an open market in which the state’s role is to make sure everyone plays fair, not to favor one provider over another.

With the passage of Question 3 in 2016, Nevada voters made clear their support for choice. This was the result of the fight to keep clean energy options in the marketplace, and of a general weariness with NV Energy for having treated consumers as if it knew we had nowhere else to go.

Now we’re entering a changing energy landscape. There are new, exciting options, offering long-term low prices, just waiting to enter Nevada’s market. Those of us who have invested in clean energy are investing in this new future.

But we can’t get there if the rules are skewed from the start. As Mr. Hurlbut said, “Successful competition requires a level playing field. Rules must be non-preferential and transparent.” The clean energy choices that Nevadans have been making now for years must be protected, not undone.

NV Energy — or any other player — shouldn’t be allowed to raise barriers for clean energy competitors, as it’s been trying to do for so long. Current energy efficiency and clean energy programs don’t need to be scrapped. Especially not when so many consumers are eagerly taking advantage of them and definitely not while those companies are creating jobs. We have to build on the smart ideas we’ve got.

Gov. Brian Sandoval established a Committee on Energy Choice last year to study these issues. So far, the committee has come up with almost no recommendations and has done little outreach to the public. Their meetings take place during weekdays when most Nevadans have to work.

Special-interest groups are already well represented in the committee ranks and are flooding its meetings with their experts. So now’s a good time to remind the committee again of why it was formed: because voters overwhelmingly supported energy choice in 2016 — and we will do so again in 2018.

The committee must structure a market that honors what consumers have been asking for all along: affordable prices, clean energy choices and a new future for energy in Nevada.

Blake Guinn is director of Nevada Consumers for Energy Choices.