2026 Regular Session - Day 49 - HJR 77 | Rep. Tom O'Dell Smith

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The title pretty much speaks for itself. This resolution was put together by some members in the Mountain Caucus, dealing with our electric bills that have been increasing dramatically over the last four or five years. The EPIC Commission, as pointed out in the title, is a commission we put together last year that actually deals with energy. It gives us the ability to look at coal-fired generators, looks at gasification, different types of energy that we can produce. And with what we're hearing out of Washington today, with the appetite looking back at coal-fired generation, we feel like this is a good time for us to do this study so we can locate and look for options in eastern Kentucky to bring our electric bills down for our people. I'd like to take this time to yield to the gentleman from Perry for a comment on this resolution. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to give you another illustration real quick because I know this study seems like it's dragging out. But I want you to understand what eastern Kentucky, what we deal with in a lot of different circumstances. We move and we shift from coal to gas. You say, man, that's really good. We're going green. So we start building these gas plants. But instead of taking our gas that we produce in eastern Kentucky that has shut off wells, we buy it from another state to transport it in here to burn the gas. One of these days, we need to figure out how to wise up, use our resources as we did years back. Fifteen years ago, we was burning 90 percent coal. Today, it's 70 percent. Our bills have jacked up at least double because of this transition. Let's start worrying about the people of Kentucky. Let's start worrying about what we're doing inside our boundaries. Let's take our resources and let's figure out how to utilize those to help our constituents. Let's not depend on other states' resources to take care of us. We have it right here in Kentucky. And all this resolution does is it instructs EPIC, a commission that we formed, to give us options on how we can get there. So with that said, Mr. Speaker, I move for the passage of Resolution 77, House Joint Resolution 77.