CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MARCH 29, 2013 OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MARCH 29, 2013 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“UTILITY REGULATORS CREATING A BANANA REPUBLIC?”
Banana republics got their appellation
during the 1920s, when dictators ruling countries like Honduras and Guatemala
made decisions on the say-so of banana growing companies, strictly for the
profit of those companies – and usually at the expense of the local citizenry.
Now it is the California Public
Utilities Commission that’s threatening to make a major area of state
policy-making into a new variety of banana republic. For in decision after
decision since former utility company chieftain Michael Peevey took over as its
president in 2002, the commission has taken care of big utilities and power
producers at the expense of ordinary citizens, called “ratepayers” in utility
parlance.
One odious example is the PUC’s order
forcing customers to pay most of the bill for fixing the pipelines of
California’s biggest natural gas company, hopefully ensuring there are no
replays of the 2010 explosion that killed eight persons in San Bruno – even
though Pacific Gas & Electric Co. took “responsibility” for the blast.
Another was the decision to let a
Spanish company build the 250-megawatt Mojave Solar power project near Barstow
– far outside PG&E’s service area – to provide electricity for that
company. At the hearing approving this project, strongly backed by Peevey,
commissioners openly asserted that Mojave Solar electricity will cost at least
double the price of kilowatts from gas-fired plants. PG&E will also profit:
Money from its customers will build transmission lines to carry that energy to
existing lines in the San Joaquin Valley, with PG&E guaranteed profits of
about 12 percent per year for 40 years on whatever those lines cost.
Now the commission is at it again,
apparently about to make another decision detrimental to customers but a boon
to power producers.
This time it’s a “peaker” electric
generating plant in San Diego, not far from the Mexican border tentatively due
for an approval vote on March 21. As always, the Peevey-led commission has a
pretext for approving this 300-megawatt natural gas-fired plant, which would
operate only when other power plants don’t provide enough juice for the region.
(One megawatt supplies at least 750 homes.)
The pretext here is uncertainty over
when – or if – the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station will restart. The
problem is that the PUC’s own administrative law judge found no need for this
new plant after a lengthy proceeding.
“It is not reasonable…when there is no
need for incremental local capacity until (at least) 2018…” said the
administrative judge’s decision.
One reason the plant is unneeded: By
late summer, even without San Onofre, Southern California will have excess
generating capacity of 30 percent, and Northern California nearly 40 percent
excess. Three new gas-fired generating plants – all within 80 miles of San
Onofre and with a total output close to San Onofre’s maximum 2,350 megawatts –
are due to come online this summer.
On reading the ALJ’s proposed decision
and a similar one from fellow PUC Commissioner Mark Ferron, who supervised the
PUC’s work on the case, former Southern California Edison Co. President Peevey
asked the head of the state Energy Commission to back his claim that there is a
pressing need for the new plant, to be named Pio Pico and to cost ratepayers
$80 million to $90 million yearly over 20 years (about $30 per residential
customer yearly).
In a December email to a staffer,
Energy Commission Chairman Robert Weisenmiller said “Peevey wants a letter from
me.”
Weisenmiller quickly sent one claiming
Pio Pico is needed. The trouble is that during Energy Commission hearings in
July in Chula Vista, that commission’s lawyer advised that “the (Energy)
Commission doesn’t do a needs-based analysis in our – in our licensing
process.” So there was no evidentiary basis for much of what Weisenmiller obligingly
wrote to Peevey.
Also during the Energy Commission hearings on Pio Pico, then-Energy Commissioner Carla Peterman declared – with no evidence to back her – that approval was justified because “we need to keep the lights on (with Pio Pico).”
Former Rhodes Scholar Peterman is now
a PUC commissioner, named to a six-year term by Gov. Jerry Brown in December.
She at first recused herself from the PUC’s Pio Pico vote because she was
involved with the plant’s environmental approval. But she now plans to vote.
In an email, Peevey stopped short of
explaining why he’s trying to overturn both Ferron and the administrative law
judge on Pio Pico. “The PUC and other state agencies…work together on energy
policy and implementation…,” he said. “The …Energy Commission some time ago
approved…the Pio Pico facility… Weisenmiller told me he thought the plant was
needed in San Diego, given the uncertainty surrounding…San Onofre… I told him
to send the PUC a letter telling us why he thinks it is needed…”
There is, thus, no evidence of any
need, only conjecture, no facts. Which makes this look like another arbitrary
PUC action benefiting big companies at the expense of customers, done in
classic banana republic style.
Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com
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