How governor’s regional electricity grid plan is flawed

Gov. Jerry Brown’s regionalization plan would transfer control of California’s electric grid to a board selected by private electric industry corporations.

The plan would take away the right of the people of California to elect the appointing authority — the governor of the state of California. Under the plan, out-ofstate companies in the new system would then be free to move their large carbon-based electricity, such as coal and natural gas over the regional grid.

The plan would shift renewable energy generation away from California, and give to out-of-state renewable energy generators market power over renewable energy needed by California to meet its Renewable Energy Portfolio mandate. In 1996, California made the mistake of putting an electricity deregulation system in place that transferred control over electricity generation needed in California. Electricity prices soared from $8 billion in 1999 to $20 billion in 2000. Proponents would have us repeat the same mistake made under the electricity deregulation — transferring control over electricity generation outside of California.

Under the plan the jurisdiction of the California System Operator, the entity that manages California’s electric grid, would be extended to parts of Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Texas, Wyoming, and all of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. Recent judicial decisions have made it clear California would lose authority to impose its renewable energy and climate change laws in the expanded grid.

California Energy Commission studies show California does not need to expand its electric grid into other states to achieve California’s renewable energy goals. The studies proponents rely on to argue regionalization would create jobs and save money are flawed. The reasoning is tenuous. The jobs are supposed to come from consumer spending increased from savings utilities get from regionalization and pass on to their customers. It is highly unlikely that utilities would ever pass on any savings to their customers.

Moreover, many more reliable jobs will be created if California builds its own renewable resources in California. Proponents also argue that it would be better to have one rather than multiple grids. However, distributed energy resources (DER) are the key to building a modern renewable energy system. We need more decentralization not less. Communities in the future will plan their energy systems as part of their land use, which is done by cities and counties.

Decentralization of energy grid planning will increase electric reliability and reduce costs. Together with DER, decentralization will allow communities to engage in more local energy cooperatives like community choice aggregation. It will also reduce the size of the over-sized utility monopolies that make Californians pay amongst the highest electricity rates in the country.

Regionalization should be the coming together of states committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) to make a unified effort to achieve shared GHG reduction goals. Two of the states proposed to be included in the plan are suing the federal government to kill former President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Let us not squander the billions of dollars California utility customers have spent to build the state’s renewable energy portfolio. California legislators and their staff have worked too hard to now surrender control of California’s energy future to private owners of the nation’s energy resources.