Minnesota Session Laws - 2020, Regular Session

CHAPTER 105--H.F.No. 3230

An act

relating to energy; amending the current electric utility program that encourages efficient lighting to include promotion of LEDs;

amending Minnesota Statutes 2018, section 216B.241, subdivision 5.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA:

Section 1.

Minnesota Statutes 2018, section 216B.241, subdivision 5, is amended to read:

Subd. 5.

Efficient lighting program.

(a) Each public utility, cooperative electric association, and municipal utility that provides electric service to retail customers and is subject to subdivision 1c shall include as part of its conservation improvement activities a program to strongly encourage the use of deleted text begin fluorescent and high-intensity discharge deleted text end new text begin LED new text end lamps. The program must include at least a public information campaign to encourage use of deleted text begin the deleted text end new text begin LED new text end lamps and proper management of spent lamps by all customer classifications.

(b) A public utility that provides electric service at retail to 200,000 or more customers shall establish, either directly or through contracts with other persons, including lamp manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers and local government units, a system to collect for delivery to a reclamation or recycling facility spent fluorescent and high-intensity discharge lamps from households and from small businesses as defined in section 645.445 that generate an average of fewer than ten spent lamps per year.

(c) A collection system must include establishing reasonably convenient locations for collecting spent lamps from households and financial incentives sufficient to encourage spent lamp generators to take the lamps to the collection locations. Financial incentives may include coupons for purchase of new deleted text begin fluorescent or high-intensity discharge deleted text end new text begin LED new text end lamps, a cash back system, or any other financial incentive or group of incentives designed to collect the maximum number of spent lamps from households and small businesses that is reasonably feasible.

(d) A public utility that provides electric service at retail to fewer than 200,000 customers, a cooperative electric association, or a municipal utility that provides electric service at retail to customers may establish a collection system under paragraphs (b) and (c) as part of conservation improvement activities required under this section.

(e) The commissioner of the Pollution Control Agency may not, unless clearly required by federal law, require a public utility, cooperative electric association, or municipality that establishes a household fluorescent and high-intensity discharge lamp collection system under this section to manage the lamps as hazardous waste as long as the lamps are managed to avoid breakage and are delivered to a recycling or reclamation facility that removes mercury and other toxic materials contained in the lamps prior to placement of the lamps in solid waste.

(f) If a public utility, cooperative electric association, or municipal utility contracts with a local government unit to provide a collection system under this subdivision, the contract must provide for payment to the local government unit of all the unit's incremental costs of collecting and managing spent lamps.

(g) All the costs incurred by a public utility, cooperative electric association, or municipal utility deleted text begin for promotion deleted text end new text begin to promote the use of LED lamps new text end and deleted text begin collection of deleted text end new text begin to collect new text end fluorescent and high-intensity discharge lamps under this subdivision are conservation improvement spending under this section.

new text begin (h) For the purposes of this subdivision, "LED lamp" means a light-emitting diode lamp that consists of a solid state device that emits visible light when an electric current passes through a semiconductor. new text end

new text begin EFFECTIVE DATE. new text end

new text begin This section is effective the day following final enactment. new text end

Presented to the governor May 18, 2020

Signed by the governor May 27, 2020, 11:17 a.m.