‘A terrible idea’: Senate Bill 540 threatens California energy progress | Opinion

A quiet battle is waging once again in the state legislature over who gets to manage California’s energy grid. And if corporate utility companies and major polluters have their way, we all stand to lose.

Last month, the California Senate passed Senate Bill 540, authored by Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, a bill that could raise electricity prices and reverse our state’s clean energy progress. If the Assembly passes this bill and Gov. Gavin Newsom signs it into law, California would be forced to turn over some important management decisions about our electricity market to a regional board chosen largely by out-of-state and corporate interests that would control a consolidated regional energy market across the Western U.S.

California’s current electrical grid operator is known as the California Independent System Operator (CAISO). While far from perfect, CAISO is currently governed by a board appointed by the California governor and confirmed by the state senate. This means that unlike grid managers in other states, it is politically accountable and functions more like a staff-led government agency.

And while CAISO would still exist under a regionalized grid, it would not be the sole entity writing the rules that govern the buying and selling of electricity in California.

In other words, regionalization would gut California’s oversight of our electricity market while giving outsized power to private utility companies and states with entrenched fossil fuel industries, like Utah and Wyoming. We could see the western grid increasingly powered by filthy fracked gas and coal.

Moreover, the only higher oversight of the board would come from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which is controlled by the unabashedly pro-fossil fuel, pro-coal Trump administration.

Ceding California’s authority over its own electricity market was always a bad idea, but it is an especially bad idea with President Donald Trump in the White House. California already imports and exports electricity to other states. There is no sudden need to alter the current arrangement.

So why are California leaders voting in favor of higher costs for consumers and more pollution in our communities? Because they have fallen for a swindler’s promise — just like in the late ’90s when California deregulated its electricity market, leading to price spikes and rolling blackouts.

Indeed, regionalizing management of the electricity market could raise energy bills for Californians. Backers claim it will lower costs, but we’ve seen just the opposite happen elsewhere: Right now, eastern states are exploring legal avenues after their ill-fated decision to turn electricity market management over to a regional board after electricity costs rose as much as 40% over a five-year period, while poor maintenance has led to reliability issues.

Proponents of SB 540 argue that California can set provisions before joining or leaving the western electricity market at any time. But simply by joining, California would go from being the sole manager of our own grid to being just one seat at a table full of fossil fuel and profit-focused corporate utility interests. This is a terrible idea.

The Western regional electricity market is the latest attempt in a decades-long effort by profit-driven utility companies to put their interests ahead of the customers they supposedly serve. We saw what happened when these same interests pushed for deregulation: catastrophic blackouts and price hikes caused by market manipulation in the Enron era and an unprecedented build-out of polluting, poisoning fracked gas that we’re still struggling to recover from decades later.

We must learn from our history, or be doomed to repeat it.