Integrated Resource Planning (IRP)

KEY RESOURCES

Integrated Resource Planning in the 2025 Session

House Study Bill 123 This is the Governor’s omnibus energy bill. It includes many elements of concern, especially a very weak IRP section that provides a blank check to monopoly utility shareholders at the expense of ratepayers. IRP must be a contested docket with maximum stakeholder participation rights, and clearly disallow “construction work in progress (CWIP),” if it is to protect ratepayers.

IRP Key Principles

  • IRP must be conducted as a contested docket in order to maximize transparency, because that is how ratepayers have a voice in the process.
  • IRP needs to be a process that sets the foundation for other rate-related dockets such as “advanced ratemaking principles” and regular rate dockets. As such, it needs to be mandatory and set on a regular 3-year cycle. Currently the House bill makes it an optional, discretionary, irregular process, which would be entirely ineffective.
  • IRP needs to be comprehensive in scope, including all modeling/predictive capabilities of the utility for defining future needs, and all potential resource solutions at all levels - transmission, generation, and distribution system assets.

Why is IRP needed?

  • Alliant rates are out of control, hurting customers and communities throughout Alliant territory. Integrated Resource Planning is one of the most important tools regulators need but do not have to get utility spending - and rates - under control.
  • MidAmerican Energy rates are lower but still have been steadily rising for a decade in a process hidden from the Iowa Utility Board. IRP would allow regulators to also address those hidden fees, and whether Iowa ratepayers are unjustly subsidizing investor profits from the export of Iowa wind.
  • The 2023 legislature ordered the Iowa Utilities Board to conduct a study on Iowa rate-making procedures. The final report of this study, conducted by London Economics International, recommended IRP as one of the most important reforms to Iowa ratemaking to assist regulators in ensuring ratepayers are getting affordable energy and a reliable grid.
  • The foundation of IRP is “only pay for what you need." Right now without IRP, as the LEI study identified, regulators are not in a position to ensure Iowa ratepayers are actually only paying for what they need, rather than paying for unnecessary investments that only benefit the bottom line of investors/shareholders.

IRP Resources

Helpful websites and resources if you want to really dive in, or to share with policymakers who might want more information.


 

In each legislative session, energy policy may be addressed by elected Iowa officials. CEDI also follows the rulings of the Iowa Utilities Commission, the three-person panel of appointed officials that “regulates utilities to ensure that reasonably priced, reliable, environmentally responsible, and safe utility services are available to all Iowans.”

CEDI provides background on relevant issues, publishes comments in news outlets and on this site, and may file comments or petition to intervene in formal policy dockets. CEDI activity and policy advocacy is nonpartisan.

UPDATED 2/11/2025