The European Commission, the EU executive, believes that the joint issuing of eurobonds by the 17 euro nations would be the most effective way to tackle the financial crisis, according to a draft paper seen Monday.
The study by the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, will be presented Wednesday and could intensify a rift with Germany, which rejects eurobonds as a viable option at the moment because it would expose its taxpayers to weaker countries’ bad debt. Germany already funds the bulk of the existing bailouts.
The draft, published by the Financial Times and confirmed by the Commission, said replacing national bonds with one jointly-backed bond would have to be matched by tight financial and budgetary coordination. It also says discipline woul be needed to make it impossible for profligate nations to live on the back of budget-concious member states.
Since Greece pushed the eurozone into its ever-worsening financial mess last year, many member states have seen their cost of government borrowing rise to record levels. Germany’s borrowing rates, meanwhile, have dropped sharply as investors buy up its bonds as a safe haven. That has created a huge imbalance in debt markets within a zone ruled by one currency.
Germany has long been reluctant to bail out member states like Greece, Ireland and Portugal, insisting it was up to their governments to live by sound economic principles and win investor confidence.
The situation worsened dramatically over the past weeks, when Italy was put under such intense market pressure that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had to resign to make way for a government of experts led by former EU commissioner Mario Monti.
As the EU’s third-largest economy with debt approaching euro1.9 trillion ($2.5 trillion) and 120 percent of its gross domestic product, Italy is seen as too big to bail out. Faced with a breakup in their currency union, the euro nations have been scrambling for new solutions.
The eurozone currently has a bailout fund, the so-called EFSF, but it still lacks the firepower and nimbleness to support Italy’s finances if it were to be frozen out of bond markets.
The European Central Bank for now is limiting bond market pressures by buying up the government bonds of weak countries like Italy guaranteed cash advance. That has helped keep Italy’s key borrowing rates below the crucial 7 percent threshold that has eventually caused Ireland and Portugal to need bailouts.
But the ECB says its bond purchases are limited and temporary. To materially lower eurozone borrowing rates to sustainable levels, the ECB would have to embark on a massive program of bond purchases.
Germany _ and the ECB, which is heavily influenced by Berlin’s policies _ opposes such a massive bond program, saying it is up to governments to get their finances straightened out.
As a result, the EU study is pushing for eurobonds _ or Stability Bonds, as it calls them _ instead of national bonds as the best way to avoid financial disaster.
“In this way, the severe liquidity constraints currently experienced by some member states could be overcome and the recurrence of such constraints would be avoided in the future,” the draft of the study said.
EU Commission officials were due to pore over the study on Monday but no fundamental changes were expected.
The draft said that eurobonds would “provide the global financial system with a second safe-haven market of a size and liquidity comparable with the U.S. Treasury market.”
The political difficulty, however, would be to impose the same fiscal rigor across the 17 euro nations and fundamentally change the balance of power between the European Union and the national capitals.
The draft says that such fundamental changes would “almost certainly require” changes in the treaty underpinning the EU. In the past, any treaty change has proven to be a tough political task.
On Monday, the issue will almost certainly come up when Greece’s new Prime Minister Lucas Papadimos meets with top EU officials to discuss Greece’s financial difficulties.
Italy’s Premier Mario Monti will visit EU headquarters on Tuesday to discuss similar issues. On Thursday, Monti is to join German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy in Strasbourg for what he calls a permanent club of the eurozone’s three largest economies to confront the debt crisis.
There was a time not so long ago that seeing a single wind turbine spinning in the distance was a novel experience for most people.
Not so much any more. There are now hundreds of wind turbines scattered across the province, representing 1,700 megawatts of wind capacity in Ontario alone
Peabody Energy Corp. said Wednesday that it has increased its stake in Australia’s Macarthur Coal Ltd. beyond 90 percent — the point that it can require other stockholders to tender their shares.
The St. Louis-based coal producer is also raising its offer for Macarthur as previously agreed to do if its stake in the mining company exceeded the 90-percent threshold, bringing the total value of the deal to almost $5 billion.
Peabody will now pay 16.25 Australian dollars for each Macarthur share, a slight bump from its previous offer of 16 Australian dollars bad credit payday advance.
Gregory H. Boyce, Peabody’s chief executive, said acquiring 100-percent of Macarthur “brings clear strategic and financial benefits.”
Peabody “looks forward to completing operational improvements, accelerating the realization of synergies and advancing Macarthur’s growth pipeline,” Boyce said.
By day, Wade Brosz teaches American history at an A-rated Florida middle school. By night, he is a personal trainer at 24 Hour Fitness.
Brosz took the three-night a week job at the gym after his teaching salary was frozen, summer school was reduced drastically, and the state bonus for board certified teachers was cut. He figures that he and his wife, also a teacher, are making about $20,000 less teaching than expected to, combined.
“The second job was to get back what was lost through cuts,” said Brosz, a nationally board certified teacher. “It was tougher and tougher to make ends meet. I started personal training because it’s flexible hours.”
Second jobs are not a new phenomenon for teachers, who have historically been paid less than other professionals. In 1981, about 11 percent of teachers were moonlighting; the number has risen to about one in five today. They are bartenders, waitresses, tutors, school bus drivers and even lawnmowers.
Now, with the severe cuts many school districts have made, teachers like Brosz, who hadn’t considered juggling a second job before, are searching the want ads. The number of public school teachers who reported holding a second job outside school increased slightly from 2003-04 to 2007-08. While there is no national data for more recent years, reports from individual states and districts indicate the number may have climbed further since the start of the recession.
In Texas, for example, the percentage of teachers who moonlight has increased from 22 percent in 1980 to 41 percent in 2010.
“It’s the economy, primarily,” said Sam Sullivan, a professor at Sam Houston State University, which conducts the survey.
Rita Haecker, president of the Texas State Teachers Association, said cuts in education have forced many teachers to take furlough days. It’s an extra strain because, unlike in the past, many teachers are now the primary breadwinner, either because they are a single parent or their spouse is unemployed, Haecker said.
“It affects their morale in the classroom,” she said. “The last thing we want is our teachers worried about how they are going to pay their bills.”
The average salary for a public school teacher nationwide in the 2009-10 school year was $55,350, a figure that has remained relatively flat, after being adjusted for inflation, over the last two decades. Starting teacher salaries can be significantly lower; compared to college graduates in other professions, they earn more than $10,000 less when beginning their careers.
“I think people have felt the need to supplement their teaching salaries in order to have a middle class lifestyle,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, which published a study this year concluding the average weekly pay of teachers in 2010 was about 12 percent below that of workers with similar education and experience.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which collects data on student performance across the globe, advised the United States earlier this year to work at elevating the teaching profession in order to improve student performance. The recommendations included measures like raising the bar for who is selected to become a teacher, providing better training and better pay. In many nations where students outperform the U.S. in reading, math and science, including Japan and South Korea, teachers earn more than they do in the United States.
“International comparisons show that in the countries with the highest performance, teachers are typically paid better relative to others, education credentials are valued more, and a higher share of educational spending is devoted to instructional services than is the case in the United States,” the OECD report concluded.
While moonlighting isn’t unique to teachers, they do tend to have second or third jobs at a higher rate than other professionals. One researcher estimates their moonlighting rates may be four times higher than those of other full-time, college educated salaried workers.
Eleanor Blair Hilty, an education professor at Western Carolina University, said most teachers make around $5,000 through outside work. Yet when asked if they would quit if given a raise in the equivalent amount, most said no. Her conclusion: teachers are getting something more from their second job other than an extra paycheck.
“A lot of it has to do with what I think is wrong with the teaching profession,” Hilty said, noting that teachers have little autonomy and control over what and how they teach. “They found their moonlighting jobs to be satisfying.”
Policies on moonlighting vary by district; some have no written guidelines, while others merely advise teachers to ensure any outside work doesn’t interfere with their duties at school.
In North Carolina, a survey conducted in 2007 found 72 percent of teachers moonlight, whether it’s an after-school job or summer employment.
“There’s a culture of silence,” Hilty said. “Everybody knows that moonlighting goes on and they know it’s part of what teachers do but nobody likes to talk about it very much.”
Michelle Hartman, a language arts and science teacher at a Plantation, Fla., elementary school, is balancing two other jobs, one as an organist with the local Presbyterian church, playing at church services, weddings and funerals, and another doing janitorial work twice a week at her father’s accounting firm.
The single mother has a master’s degree in educational leadership and has been a teacher 15 years. But she says she cannot afford to leave any of her extra jobs, which she said brings in about $6,000 year, in addition to her $46,000 teaching salary.
“I’m tired some days,” Hartman said. “But no matter what, it doesn’t matter because I know I need to be there for the students.”
Yet working an extra job inevitably does take a toll. On top of their work in the classroom, teachers have to grade papers and plan lessons _ work they often do at home. One study on teachers who moonlight in Texas cited the case of a teacher who ended up grading papers at the restaurant where she worked. The same study found that all the teachers interviewed reported that moonlighting had a negative effect on their health. In the Texas survey, a majority said moonlighting was detrimental to their work in the classroom.
“Yes, they go 100 percent, but they’re still tired,” said Dave Henderson, a retired professor who worked on the study for many years.
Albert Ochoa, a middle school art and publications teacher in Austin, Texas, works at least five hours a night at UPS as a shipper, a job he’s had since graduating from college in 1977. Even though he is now toward the higher end of the teacher salary schedule, he said he cannot afford to quit either job.
He said he’d have to earn another $2,000 a month in order to support his wife, who is on medical disability, and son, and not work a second job. “I’ve had opportunities to go work full time at UPS and do other things,” Ochoa said. “But I enjoy what I do. I like teaching.”
Democrats on Congress’ supercommittee secretly presented Republicans with a revised deficit-cutting proposal earlier this week that calls for a blend of $1 trillion in spending cuts and $1 trillion in higher tax revenue over the next decade, officials in both parties said Wednesday night, adding that compromise talks remain alive though troubled.
The previously undisclosed offer scaled back an earlier Democratic demand for $1.3 trillion in higher taxes, a concession to Republicans. At the same time it jettisoned a plan to slow the growth in future cost-of-living increases in Social Security benefits, a provision liberal Democrats oppose.
The one-page proposal was handed to Republicans at a meeting Monday night attended by some but not all members of the supercommittee. At the same session, GOP lawmakers in attendance advanced a revised proposal of their own that signaled for the first time they would be willing to accept higher revenues as part of a plan to cut deficits over the next decade.
Given the unusual secrecy of the meeting and the committee’s Nov. 23 deadline, it appeared that the pace of activity on the panel was accelerating. Less clear was whether there was still time to bridge enormous differences on priorities, or whether each side was laying the groundwork for trying to blame the other in case gridlock triumphs.
The committee, comprising six Republicans and six Democrats, has been working for weeks. Evidence of progress has been scarce, with Republicans demanding large cuts in benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare, while Democrats pressed for additional tax revenue as a condition for agreeing to make deep spending cuts.
Few details are known of the session Monday night, except that Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., outlined a plan on behalf of the four Republicans in attendance, and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., countered with the revisions in an earlier Democratic proposal.
One official said the meeting lasted several hours.
Any progress that may have been made by the panel has largely been overshadowed in the past two days by a Democratic campaign to dismiss the GOP proposal as a prescription for deep tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.
In a sign of the political struggle unfolding, Democrats circulated a four-page analysis that relied not on a review of what Toomey outlined, but on what they described as a different, similarly drawn proposal.
Republicans countered that for all the rhetoric, both sides had shown flexibility on the issues that long have been at the root of Congress’ inability to compromise on sweeping plans to cut deficits.
“Republicans have put revenues on the table. Democrats have put entitlements on the table,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. “They both need to put more of each on the table.”
Alexander said the so-called supercommittee could expect help from a bloc of 45 senators that have signed on to a letter pledging support for a deficit bargain that mixes new revenues with curbs on the growth of government benefits programs payday loan lenders.
Democrats sounded far less upbeat.
“I have yet to see a real, credible plan that raises revenue in a significant way to bring us to a fair, balanced proposal,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the co-chair of the 12-member supercommittee.
In something of a dissent, the No. 2 Senate Democratic leader, Richard Durbin of Illinois, said he considered this week’s GOP offer “an honest effort” and “a breakthrough that can lead to an agreement. That’s what we need.”
Asked why he considered it to be a breakthrough, he told reporters, “The word `revenue.’ It is a breakthrough.”
Durbin said the bipartisan group of 45 senators planned to release a statement later Wednesday urging the supercommittee to keep working toward a target in the $4 trillion range, well above its mandated savings target of $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion.
The revised Democratic plan totaled $2.3 trillion in savings over the next decade, including projected savings in interest costs the government would realize from lower deficits.
Spending on Medicare would be restrained by $350 billion over a decade, and on Medicaid, by $50 billion.
Another $200 billion would come from defense, and an identical amount from a broad swath of government programs ranging from the parks to transportation.
Democrats also called for an overhaul of the tax code that would result in an individual rate of no higher than 35 percent and a scaling back of itemized deductions.
Republicans, too, favor tax reform. In his presentation, Toomey called for a top rate of 28 percent, which appears to require deeper cutbacks in the existing deductions than Democrats favor in order to yield $250 billion in higher revenue.
Aides in both parties requested anonymity to describe the GOP proposal, and they differed on some of the details.
Broadly speaking, however, the GOP plan would raise new revenues of at least $500 billion, both skimmed off the top as Congress completes an overhaul of the tax code and from proposals such as auctioning broadcast spectrum, raising Medicare premiums and increasing aviation security fees.
The plan also would cut spending by about $700 billion, mixing a less generous cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security beneficiaries with further cuts to agency operating budgets and curbs on the booming growth of Medicare and the Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled.
Lower interest payments on the national debt would provide the remaining savings.
NYSE Euronext on Thursday said the summer’s unusually heavy trading helped lift third-quarter profit by 56 percent.
The owner of the New York Stock Exchange and other operations reported net income of $200 million, or 76 cents per share, for the three months ended Sept. 30. That compared with net income of $128 million, or 49 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.
Adjusted for costs related to the planned combination with German exchange operator Deutsche Boerse, a one-time tax benefit in Europe, and other items, profit came to 71 cents per share.
Revenue rose 20 percent to $1.26 billion, from $1.05 billion last year.
Analysts, on average, were expecting profit of 69 cents per share on revenue of $701.8 million, according to data provided by FactSet.
The strong results come as the exchange awaits a decision by European regulators on the $10 billion all-stock deal to create the world’s largest exchange operator that was announced in February.
The two companies reportedly have until Nov. 17 to address objections from the European Union’s competition watchdog that center on the potential for the combined company to potentially dominate the trading of derivatives, a very lucrative business for exchanges. Derivatives are complicated financial products that allow investors to bet on developments in things like commodity prices or interest rates.
CEO Duncan L. Niederauer said in a statement accompanying the results that the companies recently took part in a hearing before the EU regulators. “At the hearing, both companies were able to crystallize the compelling nature of our merger, which will bring significant benefits to customers, regulators and intermediaries.”
A decision on the deal is expected by late December. The two exchanges have stated the goal of completing the deal by the end of the year.
In conjunction with the deal, both companies last week announced plans to coordinate stock repurchases. NYSE Euronext it will buy back up to $100 million of its stock shares, while Deutsche Boerse AG said it would repurchase shares valued at around 100 million euros ($141.2 million). The two programs will take place simultaneously to preserve the ownership percentages of 40 percent and 60 percent to be held by former NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Boerse shareholders, respectively, in the combined company.
During the third quarter, trading volume on NYSE Euronext exchanges in both the U.S. and Europe surged amid the worst quarter for the markets since 2008. The European debt crisis, the U.S. debt ceiling debate and fears of another recession fueled the volatility.
The higher volume pushed up revenue from derivatives trading by 20 percent to $226 million. Average daily volume of global derivatives rose 33 percent to 9.3 million contracts.
Revenue from cash trading and listings gained 18 percent to $353 million. Average daily volume in Europe surged 40 percent to 1.9 million transactions. Average volume in the U.S. rose 9 percent to 2.6 billion shares traded.
During the most quarter, the New York Stock Exchange led 11 initial public offerings in the U.S., raising $3.2 billion.
The company’s revenue from information and technology services increased 11 percent to $125 million during the quarter.
Cost-cutting measures also helping NYSE Euronext’s results during the quarter.
Excluding merger-related costs, operating expenses slipped to $416 million, from $419 million last year. Excluding the impact of acquisitions, new initiatives and a $10 million negative impact attributable to foreign currency fluctuations, fixed operating expenses dropped 5 percent, the company said.
NYSE said it expects to meet its full-year guidance for operating expense of less than $1.65 billion, excluding merger expenses and exit costs. Factoring in certain portfolio changes and the impact of currency fluctuations, full-year 2011 expenses are expected to be about $1.68 billion.
In afternoon trading, NYSE Euronext shares gained 95 cents, or 3.7 percent, to $26.48. The stock is down 12 percent for the year.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is warning of a “marked slowdown” in eurozone economies next year and says the European Union needs to clarify its anti-crisis measures.
In an update Monday of economic forecasts timed to coincide with this week’s meeting of the Group of 20 major economies, the OECD says “patches of mild negative growth” are likely in the eurozone in 2012.
It says economic growth in the eurozone will stall at 0.3 percent next year, after just 1 cash advance no faxing.6 percent growth this year.
The Paris-based OECD says “detailed information is needed” on how the EU will implement the package of measures announced last week aimed at resolving the European debt crisis, to prevent a repeat of the global crisis that hammered economies three years ago.
Stressful economic periods lead to stressful family finances, which in turn can lead to bankruptcy filings.
Bankruptcy is not a panacea to lift up all your financial troubles and put a smile on your face, as late-night television commercials would have you believe. But in case it turns out to be the only answer, you should have a full understanding of available choices and potential repercussions.
Personal bankruptcies in the U.S. declined 8 percent in the first half of this year compared with the year-earlier period, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. Chapter 7 bankruptcies fell 9 percent, while Chapter 13 filings were down 3 percent. Sounds good, but it may not be.
“The decline in personal bankruptcies isn’t an indication that the economy is vastly improving, but rather an indication that people can’t afford to file,” said Doug Erickson, vice president in strategic programs for the nonprofit CredAbility (www.CredAbility personal business card.org) counseling service in Atlanta. “It isn’t cheap to file for bankruptcy, with a Chapter 7 bankruptcy costing you anywhere from $1,000 to $2,500 (in court and attorney fees), and payment is due up front.”
Chapter 7 is the more prevalent personal bankruptcy, providing liquidation of a debtor’s property and distribution by the bankruptcy trustee of proceeds to creditors. There is no repayment plan.
Chapter 13 bankruptcy, also known as the “wage earner’s plan,” allows people with regular incomes to develop a plan to repay all or part of their debts.
“If you don’t have a source of income, you will not qualify to file Chapter 13,” explained Erickson. “If you are unemployed but can make mortgage and car payments, you can file Chapter 7.”
While you can keep your house in Chapter 7, unsecured debt such as credit card debt will be discharged, he explained. However, debt acquired within 90 days of filing can’t be discharged
Hurricane Jova roared toward a collision Tuesday night with a vulnerable Mexican coastline dotted with tourist resorts and flood-prone mountain villages, prompting evacuations and shutting down one of the country’s top cargo ports.
Jova weakened some as its center drew to within 78 miles (125 kilometers) of shore, but it still had maximum sustained winds of 100 mph (160 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center reported. The forecast path pointed to landfall between Barra de Navidad and the larger resort of Puerto Vallarta to the north around midnight.
As the storm’s outer bands of rain began hitting the coast, some vowed to ride out the storm, while others took refuge at shelters in towns like Jaluco, just inland from the beach community of Barra de Navidad.
“My house has a thatch roof, and it’s not safe,” said Maria de Jesus Palomera Delgado, 44, a farmworker’s wife who went to an improvised shelter at a grade school in Jaluco, along with her 17 children and grandchildren.
“The neighbors told us the house was going to collapse” if hit by the hurricane, she added as the children slept nearby on folding cots packed into a classroom.
In an another classroom, migrant farmworker Rufina Francisco Ventura, 27, fed her 2-month-old son. She said she had left the ranch where she plants chilies and tomatoes planning only to pick up some free blankets, but shelter workers “told me I shouldn’t leave here, because it’s going to hit hard.”
Jalisco state authorities evacuated about 200 people to shelters by Tuesday and was issuing alerts over loudspeakers placed in communities long the coast, telling people to take precautions as the hurricane approached, state civil defense spokesman Juan Pablo Vigueras said. The state had 69 shelters ready, he said.
Authorities also set up shelters for residents of inland towns, where the mountainous terrain could cause flash floods and mudslides, which often pose the greatest dangers in hurricanes
“We have about 100 officials working in these communities, telling people they should evacuate,” said Francisco Garnica, the duty officer at the Jalisco state civil defense office. But many were reluctant to leave their homes for fear they would be robbed. “They are worried about their possessions,” he said.
The Mexican army said it had assigned about 1,500 soldiers to hurricane preparedness and relief efforts.
Jova was expected to hit the states of Jalisco, Colima and Nayarit the hardest. About 183,000 people live in the center of the storm’s projected path, said Laura Gurza, chief of the federal Civil Protection emergency response agency.
The U.S. hurricane center in Miami warned that storm surge was expected to produce significant coastal flooding between the major seaport of Manzanillo, east of Barra de Navidad, and Cabo Corrientes, southwest of Puerto Vallarta Internet Payday loans.
Jova could unleash as much as 20 inches (50 centimeters) in isolated areas as it moved inland.
Hotels in Barra de Navidad and the neighboring beach town of Melaque dragged in beach furniture and advised their guests to leave the towns.
But some tourists seemed unfazed.
Bill Clark, a 59-year-old traveler from Santa Rosa, California, ate tacos at a street stand while enjoying a balmy Monday night.
“Some people are going out of town but I’m not really worried,” said Clark, who has been coming to the town of about 3,000 people since 1994. “I’m from California, I have been through earthquakes.”
Christoph Dietschi, 42, and his wife, four children and mother-in-law had checked in to a small beachside hotel in Melaque for a family wedding, but left Monday after the manager told them he couldn’t guarantee their safety or service when the hurricane hit. They rented an apartment in Manzanillo.
“It was better to leave because they can’t guarantee that everything would be OK for us. Maybe there is no electricity, no water, so it’s better to leave,” Dietschi said.
Dietschi walked Manzanillo’s cobblestone streets with his family under just one umbrella to the beach of La Audiencia on Tuesday afternoon to watch the gray sky and choppy sea before the hurricane.
“We still hope that Saturday everything is all right,” said Diestschi. His brother-in-law is scheduled to get married at a church in Barra de Navidad on Saturday.
Heavy rains in Manzanillo forced restaurants and stores to close Tuesday afternoon. Employees at convenience stores boarded up or taped their windows. Soldiers patrolled the main seaside avenue.
Authorities shut down Manzanillo’s port, the biggest cargo center on Mexico’s Pacific coast, and the nearby port of Nuevo Vallarta.
A hurricane warning was in effect for a 100-mile (160-kilometer) stretch of coast from just south of Puerto Vallarta to a point south of Manzanillo. A tropical storm warning was in effect farther south, to the port of Lazaro Cardenas.
At midafternoon, Jova was centered about 85 miles (140 kilometers) southwest of Manzanillo and was moving north-northeast at 6 mph (9 kph), the Hurricane Center said.
In 1959, an unnamed hurricane struck near Manzanillo, reportedly killing 1,000 people. Detailed reports on hurricanes were not available at the time.
The hurricane was expected to be dissipating by the time the Pan American Games start Friday in nearby Guadalajara.
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Irwin regained some strength farther out in the Pacific with winds near 45 mph (72 kph). While it was expected to move eastward toward land, forecasts indicated it probably wouldn’t make landfall.
Renewable energy advocates, dissatisfied with how the state’s 2008 clean power law was implemented, want voters to help strengthen the measure.
P.J. Wilson, director of Columbia-based Renew Missouri, plans to file papers with the secretary of state’s office today as the first official step toward getting a revised a new renewable energy standard on the ballot next fall, he said.
The proposed rewrite of the state’s existing clean energy standard would require investor-owned utilities to get 25 percent of their electric generation from the wind, sun and other renewable resources by 2025. The current law requires 15 percent by 2021.
Just as importantly, it would clarify certain parts of the existing law that have been a source of sharp disagreements between Missouri’s small-but-growing renewable energy industry and the state’s biggest utilities.
In an emailed statement, Warren Wood, Ameren Missouri’s vice president of regulatory and legislative affairs, said the utility was still reviewing a copy of the ballot initiative it received late Wednesday. “It is premature for us to offer an opinion on the impact of this ballot initiative on our customers’ rates,” he said.
Renew Missouri and other supporters must collect almost 100,000 valid signatures from across the state by early May to get the measure on the ballot next fall. First, language for the petition must be approved by Secretary of State Robin Carnahan.
Two-thirds of Missouri voters approved the renewable energy measure three years ago. Polling conducted by Renew Missouri this summer suggested similarly strong voter interest in a law to aid renewable energy development. But not for the same reason, Wilson said.
“I wouldn’t be filing this if I didn’t think it had strong public support,” he said. “But I think the reason for voter support has shifted.”
The selling point then was energy security, he said. Today, it’s jobs.
The 2008 ballot measure drew no organized opposition. But months of contentious debate followed during the administrative rulemaking process at the Public Service Commission. In the end, a little-known legislative committee stripped a controversial provision from rules advanced by the commission.
The change allowed utilities to meet the green power mandate by purchasing so-called renewable energy certificates instead of building wind or solar farms in Missouri or contracting to buy renewable energy from neighboring states my credit score. Utilities can purchase the certificates from out-of-state renewable energy producers and count each of them as 100 kilowatt hours toward their mandated goals.
Renewable energy backers, including solar and wind companies that would have benefited from the rules as originally written by the PSC, balked at the change. Their dissatisfaction jump-started effort to rewrite the law and implement a stronger renewable energy standard.
The renewable standard being proposed by Renew Missouri would require utilities to develop renewable energy in or purchase it from Missouri or at least within the regional power grid.
It would also clarify ambiguity concerning the impact on electric rates. The existing law caps the impact on electric rates at 1 percent. The proposed ballot initiative would prohibit utilities from spending more for green power than they would spend to purchase or generate fossil fuel-based energy.
The rewrite of the law would also eliminate the legislative review of PSC administrative rules and prohibit Ameren Missouri from counting its century-old Keokuk, Iowa, hydroelectric plant toward the green power mandate.
Nationwide, 32 states and the District of Columbia have renewable energy mandates, according to the Department of Energy. Missouri is one of few states with a voter-approved law.
The current law requires utilities to gradually increase renewable energy sales until they reach the 15 percent target in 2021. The proposed goal of 25 percent by 2025 equals the renewable energy target in Illinois.
“It’s pretty middle of the pack,” Wilson, said.
Renew Missouri is recruiting and training volunteers to help collect petition signatures and soliciting donations to support the effort. The has conducted held training sessions around the state in recent weeks, including one at the St. Louis County Public Library in Frontenac on Thursday night.
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