HOUSE MEMORIAL 32

53rd legislature - STATE OF NEW MEXICO - second session, 2018

INTRODUCED BY

               George Dodge, Jr. And Bill McCamley and Stephanie Garcia Richard

A MEMORIAL

RECOGNIZING THE EXISTING AND POTENTIAL ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL BENEFITS PRESENTED TO THE STATE BY THE DEVELOPMENT OF RENEWABLE ENERGY RESOURCES; RECOGNIZING THE CONTRIBUTIONS MADE TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF RENEWABLE ENERGY RESOURCES BY THE NEW MEXICO RENEWABLE ENERGY TRANSMISSION AUTHORITY; EXPRESSING THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES' SUPPORT FOR FUNDING THE NEW MEXICO RENEWABLE ENERGY TRANSMISSION AUTHORITY.

     WHEREAS, New Mexico is rich in renewable energy resource potential, including solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and biofuels energy; and

     WHEREAS, New Mexico lacks transmission capacity to deliver renewable energy from its sources to load centers where it is needed; and

     WHEREAS, New Mexico has implemented policies and incentives for renewable energy resource development, and, given New Mexico's geographical location, the state is poised to become a leader in the new energy economy; and

     WHEREAS, renewable energy resource development will breathe new life into rural New Mexico through job creation, job training and financial investment; and

     WHEREAS, transmission projects provide improved system reliability, improved infrastructure for economic development and enhanced diversity of power generation technologies that lead to stabilized or lower energy costs; and

     WHEREAS, transmission development could allow New Mexico to export energy to markets outside of the state; and

     WHEREAS, the development and use of renewable energy resources are vitally important to New Mexico's future; and      WHEREAS, the identification of renewable energy resource zones and potential corridors to accommodate those identified zones presents substantial economic opportunities in New Mexico; and          

     WHEREAS, New Mexico took a substantial step toward realizing these potentials by creating the New Mexico renewable energy transmission authority through passage into law of House Bill 188 in 2007, which requires the authority to plan, finance, build and operate new electricity transmission lines; and

     WHEREAS, the New Mexico renewable energy transmission authority constructed and owns the transmission portion of the High Lonesome Mesa project, a one-hundred-megawatt wind-powered electricity generation project located in Torrance county that is currently operating and that is estimated to generate fourteen million dollars ($14,000,000) in tax revenue for Torrance county and the Estancia municipal school district and nineteen million dollars ($19,000,000) in lease revenue to local landowners over the next thirty years; and

     WHEREAS, the New Mexico renewable energy transmission authority is co-developing the Western Spirit Clean Line project, a one-hundred-forty-mile transmission line that will collect renewable power from east central New Mexico and deliver approximately one thousand megawatts of power to markets in the western United States that have a strong demand for clean, reliable energy; and

     WHEREAS, the Western Spirit Clean Line project is estimated to generate approximately twenty-eight million dollars ($28,000,000) in property taxes for New Mexico counties over the first forty years of operation and will provide hundreds of jobs to construct, and dozens of jobs to maintain and operate, the transmission line and wind generators that will provide power to the line; and

     WHEREAS, the New Mexico renewable energy transmission authority has renewed a memorandum of understanding for the SunZia Southwest transmission project, which is a five-hundred-fifteen-mile transmission line in New Mexico and Arizona that would deliver three thousand megawatts of power to western markets; and

     WHEREAS, the SunZia Southwest transmission project is estimated to generate approximately forty-six million dollars ($46,000,000) in state and local taxes during the construction period and over four million dollars ($4,000,000) in property taxes during construction and operations, and it will provide nearly four thousand jobs during construction and more than two hundred jobs during operation of the transmission line and wind generators that will provide power to the line; and

     WHEREAS, the New Mexico renewable energy transmission authority has proven its ability to provide substantial economic benefit to the state, and its completed and pending projects and plans for further projects will provide additional substantial benefit to the state; and

     WHEREAS, the continued existence of the New Mexico renewable energy transmission authority and the future of the currently pending projects and future plans are in jeopardy because the authority did not receive public funding in fiscal years 2016 and 2017;

      NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that the state be requested to restore public funding for the New Mexico renewable energy transmission authority to enable it to continue to provide economic benefit to the state; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the New Mexico legislature be requested to include an appropriation in the amount of two hundred fifty thousand dollars ($250,000) in the General Appropriation Act of 2018 to fund the operations of the New Mexico renewable energy transmission authority; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be transmitted to the New Mexico renewable energy transmission authority, the speaker of the house of representatives, the president pro tempore of the senate, the chair of the house appropriations and finance committee and the chair of the senate finance committee.

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