Submitted Testimony:
Marc Morano’s Oregon testimony – March 6, 2025 – HB 3247 – Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow
https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2025R1/Measures/Overview/HB3247
Morano’s full submitted testimony: https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2025R1/Measures/Testimony/HB3247
Makes a power company have a new power source that meets certain standards before
the company can close a power plant. (Flesch Readability Score: 60.6).
Requires an electric company to first acquire a replacement resource of reliable or dispatchable electricity prior to retiring an electric power generating facility that provides reliable or dispatchable electricity.
Requires the Public Utility Commission to seek a waiver to, or if unable to obtain a waiver, seek an injunction against any federal regulations or requirements that impose increasing costs to the maintenance or operation of an electric power generating facility such that an electric company seeks to retire the electric power generating facility.
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CFACT’s Marc Morano’s Testimony:
I am a former senior U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee staff member. I am currently with CFACT’s Climate Depot. CFACT, or a Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow, is a public policy group dedicated to free market conservation and environmental policies.
This HB 3247 bill is necessary for Oregen and all 50 states and utilities. A law provision that mandates power companies not to drink the Kool-Aid about renewable energy, solar, and wind and make computer model projections of how they will replace the existing power of reliable fossil fuels is a game changer in electrical grid management. While replacing hydroelectric dams with solar or wind power may sound like a great idea, it should not be attempted until lawmakers are confident they can replace the proven and reliable energy lost from the destruction of the dams.
This is clearly a common-sense bill that protects government officials, businesses, and consumers. HB 3247 ensures that reliable electricity will continue to flow in Oregon and not be jeopardized by vague promises of solar and wind being cheaper and taking over for hydroelectric or fossil fuels. It is a bulwark against the so-called transition to Net Zero and all this other utopian talk about energy that has failed to deliver real-world results.
To be clear, if you look at our current situation, solar and wind combined still make up less than 5% of total energy production in the US, and there are less than 14% combined of our electrical grid. So the idea that we can just remove hydroelectric dams and retire fossil fuel plants on the promise that so-called renewable energy will just swoop in and replace that lost energy is not based on facts, reality, history, and common sense.
A classic case of these energy fallacies would be in Europe. Many European nations blindly pursued the Net Zero agenda by retiring fossil fuel-powered plants that had been reliably providing energy for decades by producing cheap, available, plentiful energy. But in the pursuit of saving the planet, Europeans collectively decided to start pulling offline old coal plants and gas plants, and fracking wells.
In one hilarious example, former UK prime minister Boris Johnson even suggested cementing over all of the fracking wells in England in 2019 as a way of showing his commitment to NetZero climate goals. England fell victim to the belief that solar and wind would replace all of the lost reliable fossil fuel energy.
Of course, England finally saw the light and didn’t end up cementing over their fracking wells, but they did decommission them. There is even talk once again in 2025 of pouring cement into the UK fracking sites. All of Europe, particularly after the invasion Russian invasion of Ukraine, was left with a massive energy crisis with rapidly increasing costs much higher than anything we’re experiencing here in the United States. In 2024 and 2025, these EU countries are openly rejecting the so-called NetZero climate agenda, most recently with Germany.
If Europe had passed a bill like HB 3247 years ago, they could have avoided this fate.
You have the opportunity to learn from Europe’s mistakes today in the Oregon legislature and on this committee.
The provision in this bill requires seeking a waiver or an injunction against Federal Regulations, which is also a key component that should receive bipartisan support in Oregon. Standing up to unrealistic federal energy regulations in pursuit of ‘stopping climate change’ is not based in reality and, therefore, something Oregon legislators need to protect from being imposed on its citizens.
Don’t believe me, Reuters News Service, a mainstream corporate media outlet, had a ground-breaking energy article on Feb 27 of this year:
Feb 27 (Reuters Breakingviews) – The pursuit of net zero carbon emissions has been a resounding failure. Despite trillions of dollars spent on renewable energy, hydrocarbons still account for over 80% of the world’s primary energy and a similar share of recent increases in energy consumption, according to The Energy Institute. Coal, oil and natural gas production are at record highs. Emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise inexorably.
The financial markets were already losing confidence in the energy transition before Donald Trump returned to the White House. A more realistic approach to climate policy is urgently needed.
… Solar and wind power have grown to a mere 3.5% of primary energy production. The levelised cost of renewable energy – which measures of the net present value of electricity produced over a plant’s lifetime – has declined sharply over the years. But this has not resulted into lower electricity prices.
In fact, as the share of the energy mix provided by renewables has risen, electricity prices have tended to increase. That’s because wind and solar power are intermittent. Since storing energy in batteries is uneconomic, traditional sources of power are still needed as backup, which is expensive.
In summary, I urge you to look at the facts and reality and say this bill makes common sense and should get bipartisan support. No energy source should be retired until you verify that any potential replacement energy is suitable.
I urge you to support this bill HB 3247, as this is the path forward to protect Oregonians and American businesses from irrational energy decisions that are not based in reality. Thank you for your time.
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https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2025R1/Measures/Overview/HB3247
https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2025R1/Downloads/MeasureDocument/HB3247
https://www.billtrack50.com/legislatordetail/27743
