Never ever again can we permit out-of-state profiteers to hold California hostage

A dysfunctional power marketplace, driven by out-of-state energy providers and brokers, put California in peril during the final 7 years. In 1996, the Legislature as well as the Governor launched an untested restructuring of California's electrical energy to unregulated private companies. The price tag of electrical energy, long regulated, was to be set, instead, in a freewheeling commodities market. Proponents of deregulation envisioned lower energy costs and smaller electricity bills but instead we got skyrocketing costs, cost gouging, and an unreliable supply of electricity.


The out-of-state generators who purchased the majority of our utility's energy plants were charging California various hundred percent more for wholesale electrical energy than it paid the year just before. As opposed to employing its exclusive powers to lower these record impact crusher costs, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission shirked its responsibilities to defend ratepayers from this legalized highway robbery and produced matters worse when, in December, they lifted the difficult price cap, causing the typical price tag per megawatt hour to enhance almost 900 percent. Which is like paying 25 dollars for a three-dollar gallon of milk. On some occasions, the merchant generators even refused to sell California back its personal power since they could locate higher rock crusher rates elsewhere. Worst of all, there's evidence that some generators withheld electricity from the California grid to create artificial scarcity; which, in turn, drove up the value astronomically.


Electricity isn't an exotic commodity to become traded inside the chaotic equivalent of a futures markets; electricity is actually a basic necessity of life. It truly is the very fuel that powers an economy. We ought to regain manage over the power that is generated in California and commit it to the public good. In no way once more can we allow out-of-state profiteers to hold California hostage. Never ever once more will we let out-of-state generators to threaten to turn off lights with the flip of their switch.