HB1642 – Expands on-bill repayment programs for renewable energy and conservation projects.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Doglio (D; 22nd District; Olympia)
Current status – Referred to Rules 2 Consideration in 2019. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session. Failed to pass out of the House by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
There’s a House Bill Report on the substitute and a Fiscal Note.

2019 Legislative History
Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy February 18th. Passed out of committee February 21st, weakened by an amendment. Referred to Rules; placed on 2nd Reading March 9th. Referred to Rules 2 Consideration March 21st. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.

Comments –
The National Resources Defense Council did a detailed brief five years ago about the issues in designing these programs. (Often, they require that the expected savings are sufficient to cover the loan payments, so the project is  “bill-neutral”, though HB1642 doesn’t.) It can also be complicated to figure out how to handle one of these  loans when the borrower leaves a utility’s service area, or sells the property, but that’s an issue that the lender, not the utility, needs to take into account.

The amended bill makes offering of on-bill repayment program an option for all utilities, rather than requiring large utilities to offer one, and makes a number of other changes through an amendment by the prime sponsor which are summarized at the end of this page.

Summary –
In these programs, a utility facilitates a customer’s repayment of a loan from a third party for a renewable energy or energy conservation project by adding the payments to the utility bills. HB 1642 requires utilities with over 25,000 customers to offer these loans to their customers, unless their energy conservation plan includes an on-bill or off-bill repayment program for energy conservation loans that they administer and they or a third party capital provider make. The bill lets these utilities count the energy savings from projects financed through the programs toward their requirements for conservation under the Energy Independence Act (I-937), as long as the projects meet the Act’s standard for cost-effectiveness.

The bill defines the capital providers for these loans as “non-profit lenders, community banks, or credit unions.” It also allows smaller utilities and retail electric co-ops to choose to offer on-bill repayment programs.

Details:

Up to 25% of one of these loans may fund measures that aren’t included in a utility’s conservation portfolio.

Utilities have to provide borrowers in these programs with any conservation incentives they’re eligible for, and must have a marketing and outreach program to publicize them.

They can recover their reasonable and prudent costs for publicizing the programs and for upgrading their billing systems to handle the payments. They’re not responsible for recovering the loan; any payments go toward meeting the utility’s part of the bill first.