CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MAY 26, 2017, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MAY 26, 2017, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“CCAs BRINGING COMEUPPANCE TO BIG UTILITIES”
You can call it a form of comeuppance
for huge privately-owned California utility companies unscathed so far by
exposure of their negligence and blundering of the past decade. They now find
themselves deeply threatened by what some might consider a small army of
mosquitos.
No individual was penalized when a
federal trial found Pacific Gas & Electric Co. guilty of criminal
negligence in the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion that killed eight persons
and destroyed dozens of homes. The company itself was fined just $3 million, a
pittance for the vast enterprise.
Similarly, no company executive has
yet been charged with anything criminal in the well-documented multi-billion
dollar collusion between Southern California Edison Co. officials and Michael
Peevey, former president of both Edison and the state Public Utilities Commission.
They agreed privately to force consumers to pay the bulk of the costs for
decommissioning the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in northern San Diego
County, rendering subsequent public hearings completely without meaning. That
case is still under investigation, more than two years after raids on Peevey’s
homes uncovered key documents in the case.
But the PUC, a participant in the illicit meeting where the
decision was made to dun consumers more than $3 billion for the closure, saw
its members carefully maintain straight faces while fining Edison a puny $16
million for not reporting a meeting their own chief attended.
Those paltry penalties deprived
millions Californians of justice. But a different kind of punishment is now
pecking away at the utility giants. This comes in the form of Community Choice
Aggregations, arrangements where cities and counties can let electricity
customers choose whether to stay with the existing utilities or switch to a
locally-run public entity that buys power from generating companies at the
source and brings it to consumers via utility company lines. Non-profit CCA
prices are generally lower than those of for-profit utilities.
How seriously do the utilities take
the threat of CCAs? One indicator was the 2010 campaign for Proposition 16, run
by and for PG&E, which spent $46 million qualifying and promoting the
measure. That initiative would have allowed CCAs to form only after a
two-thirds supermajority vote in any area involved. Essentially, that was an
effort to kill the CCA idea. Even without much experience with CCAs, and with
opponents spending less than .2 percent as much as PG&E, the measure lost
by a 53 to 47 percent margin.
The eight current California CCAs now
operate in places as diverse as Sonoma County, San Francisco and the high
desert city of Lancaster in Los Angeles County. Butte County is exploring the
idea. So are San Jose and San Diego.
But the most serious comeuppance so
far for the utilities came this spring, when Los Angeles County supervisors –
free to do this because Proposition 16 failed – voted to create a CCA that will
buy power primarily from renewable sources like solar thermal arrays, wind
farms, hydroelectric dams and geothermal wells.
When the new CCA opens next year, anyone in unincorporated areas
within California’s most populous county can switch to it. Scores of cities in
the county will also be able to join the CCA and provide residents the choice
of whether to stay with Edison or opt out.
The city of Los Angeles, which has run a publicly-owned utility of
its own for many decades, will not be eligible.
No one has reported the exact amount
CCAs already cost the big utilities, but it is sure to be in the billions of
dollars once the Los Angeles County version comes online.
The companies know the most effective
way for them to retain customers under this burgeoning free-choice system is to
provide better service. So Edison is building scores of new electric vehicle
charging stations, which look progressive even though they serve only a tiny
fraction of Californians. And PG&E has upgraded equipment in San Francisco,
cutting the frequency of significant blackouts to an average of just 1.02 times
per customer per year.
CCA’s, of course, are not a direct
punishment of PG&E and Edison for their blunders and illegal acts. But CCAs
very likely would not be proliferating without that very recent history, which
saw the big utilities create an unfriendly climate for themselves.
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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
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