Legislation would hold NSP more accountable, protect solar users
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Rankin and MLA Claudia Chender of the New Democratic Party both said the effectiveness of the amendments will be determined by how the regulations are fleshed out.
“I don’t think it’s about protecting ratepayers, unfortunately,” Rankin said of the new legislation.
“There is some good stuff there,” Chender said. “Removal of the net-metering charge is a good move … both for solar energy and for renewables at large. We don’t see a lot in there about protecting ratepayers so we’re trying to parse whether this will in fact have a big impact on rates.”
The New Democratic caucus has already introduced a suite of new legislation that would help lower people’s power bills, restrict Nova Scotia Power’s profits and address the climate emergency.
Recently, Chender introduced legislation to change the mandate of the utility and review board to include equity and sustainability, and a second bill to restrict Nova Scotia Power’s profits unless they meet a series of performance standards. A third NDP bill called for a study about returning the utility to public ownership, an idea that Premier Tim Houston dismissed this week with a “that ship has sailed" comment.
Chender said the NDP is “cautiously optimistic” about the PCs’ proposed legislative amendments.
“It doesn’t seem to go nearly as far as the things we’ve been proposing for the last couple of weeks,” she said. “A big one is the efficiency piece. In the long term if we want rates to go down, we need efficiency to go up massively, and we didn’t really hear much about that.” “