Washington Initiative 937

Ballot Initiative 937 (official name Initiative measure no. 937, known as I-937) is a clean energy initiative passed in the US state of Washington, appearing on the ballot in the November 2006 elections. It passed with 52 percent of the vote.[1]

Elections in Washington

Content of the proposal

The initiative requires large utilities to obtain 15% of their electricity from new renewable resources such as solar and wind (but excluding hydro) by 2020 with incremental steps of 3% by 2012 and 9% by 2016. It also requires that utilities undertake all cost-effective energy conservation.[2]

Precedents

Similar legislation has been enacted in at least 20 other states including the following. (The table is sorted by date and then by descending percentage. I-937 is included in bold.)

State Name Enacted Percentage By Comments/Source
Maine 30% 2000
Arizona 1.1% 2007
Massachusetts 4% 2009
Connecticut 10% 2010
Iowa ~10% 2010
New Mexico 10% 2011
New York 24% 2013
Nevada 20% 2015
Minnesota 19% 2015
Montana 15% 2015
Colorado Amendment 37 2004 10% 2015 First ballot initiative[3]
Texas ~4.2% 2015 5.88 GW
California 20% 2017
Rhode Island 16% 2019
Delaware 10% 2019
Maryland 7.5% 2019
New Jersey 22.5% 2020
Hawaii 20% 2020
Washington I-937 15% 2020
Washington, D.C. 11% 2022
Pennsylvania 8% 2020

Unless indicated otherwise, data are from [4]

Supporters

Supporters included the following:[5]

Elected officials

Civic and political organizations

Health organizations

Energy and labor

Environmental

Faith
  • Earth Ministry
  • Lutheran Public Policy Office of Washington
  • Washington Association of Churches
  • Church Council of Greater Seattle

Newspapers

Opponents

Opponents included many small co-op electrical providers (even though the initiative affects only utilities with greater than 25,000 customers) as well as the following:[6]

gollark: Especially at higher brightness.
gollark: Also, I think OLED is less efficient sometimes.
gollark: Power draw varies depending on color displayed.
gollark: No, there are others.
gollark: Yay OLEDs!

References
  1. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/default.aspx/id/15652935/ Archived November 16, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  2. Full text of Ballot Initiative 937 (.pdf)
  3. The Colorado Renewable Energy Standard Ballot Initiative
  4. State Clean Energy Maps and Graphs
  5. http://www.yeson937.org/content.jsp?content_KEY=1977
  6. http://www.nooni937.com/Endorsements.html
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