The chairman of the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission, Dusty Johnson, says he will testify Wednesday before a U.S. Senate committee in Washington on climate change legislation.

If the bill becomes law, companies will have to get government permits allowing them to emit greenhouse gases. Companies could buy and sell the permits.

Johnson says he thinks the measure would make South Dakota utility companies buy permits from companies in bigger states and that the legislation would raise the energy bills of many South Dakotans by 25 percent as early as 2012.

He says the measure is "blatantly unfair" to the Midwest and is more about politics than the environment.