Power Politics

Why a retreat from electricity deregulation is a victory for PG&E, and a loss for you and me

Comments (0) By Matt Smith Wednesday, Sep 20 2000

...continued from page 3

Rather than reward them, the state should topple these utility jokers from their current catbird seat. The first step in this journey would be for the general public to realize that true competition, free from manipulation from PG&E and its brethren, is the only way to truly fetter an entrenched monopoly. We must face a simple fact: PG&E and its sister monopolies have proven they enjoy too much government influence for a government-regulated monopoly system to work.

Legislators, therefore, should get to work creating a robust retail power market that is meant to benefit consumers, rather than the utility monopolies. The Legislature should encourage competing electricity trading floors, where independent power companies can buy power contracts of any length, for any time period, and in any quantity they desire. Legislators should facilitate, rather than prohibit, direct longer-term power purchasing agreements between electricity generators and cooperatives of businesses and ratepayers. By removing large chunks of power demand from the moment-to-moment electricity spot market, the Legislature could reduce the likelihood of price spikes, and foster consistent, lower electricity prices.

Fred Harper

More About

The transmission system should be wrested from the hands of PG&E, which is a monopoly proprietor of our power lines under the current system. The transmission system should be placed in a regulated private entity with no relation to the energy suppliers, or in a government agency.

And the ridiculous practice of automatically assigning customers to the entrenched monopolies should be immediately abandoned. Making it easier for customers to choose will force electricity providers to compete on the basis of price and service.

If Nancy Snow and the rest of us are really, truly given a chance to exercise our personal preferences and punish bad-acting utility giants -- well, that would be a divine occurrence, wouldn't it?

For example, the Rev. Sallie Bingham, the Grace Cathedral priest who, with the help of others, founded Episcopal Power and Light, will continue with plans to unite Californians of all religious faiths in a consortium that would buy power from green producers, and not PG&E, Southern California Edison, or Sempra Energy/SDG&E. This new organization, which Bingham is establishing with the cooperation of the California Council of Churches, will be called California Interfaith Power and Light. It will proselytize members of churches and synagogues throughout the state about the benefits of switching away from the monopolists, and toward green energy.

"The faith community is in a very logical position to lead the response to global climate change," Bingham says. "We are called into good stewardship of creation."

If Bingham and like-minded believers are successful, and faithful and secular alike by the million turn away from the monopoly electric companies, justice shall roll down like mighty waters as if through a hydroelectric turbine. To those competitors that successfully appeal to consumers' new right to choose, the glories of a true competitive market shall become manifest, and consumer preferences shall shine upon them, and give them peace. As to the others, the entrenched monopolies that have used political bribery to cudgel consumers, they shall finally suffer the destiny prophesied for them in Romans 2:8:

"To those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness: indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish."