By Camille von Kaenel, POLITICO
The Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications will meet tomorrow to discuss the West-Wide Governance Pathway Initiative, a long-awaited — and long-debated — proposal to develop an independent entity to oversee the West’s fragmented electricity markets.
Expect Trump to loom over the hearing, as he did during his first term when lawmakers balked at the prospect of subjecting the California grid to more federal oversight. Ratepayer advocates are planning to push that argument again against the current vehicle, Sens. Josh Becker and Henry Stern‘s SB 540.
“Pathway makes California more vulnerable to the Trump FERC and provides the best opportunity for Trump to hold California over a barrel or hurt our economy and consumers,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, in a letter to lawmakers provided first to POLITICO.
Becker pointed out that California Independent System Operator tariffs are already subject to FERC jurisdiction.
“We are right to be concerned about the unprecedented and frankly unconstitutional actions this federal administration has proposed,” he told POLITICO via text message. “But the reality is that we are no more protected in our existing market structure from hostile FERC actions.”
Renewable energy advocates are pushing back as well, brandishing the plan’s potential to reduce electricity prices by increasing efficiency. “The authority of California in setting its own policies when it comes to clean energy and transmission planning and all these things, one that’s going to be untouched,” said Edson Perez, the California lead at Advanced Energy United.
And Becker agreed. “Opponents claim that FERC will have authority to tell CA to stay in a market. This is simply not true,” he said. “FERC does not have the authority to tell market participants they have to join a market or force them to stay in one. There is no legal precedent for this.”
What’s different this time is that labor is on board, in the form of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which had opposed previous efforts over their potential to send energy construction jobs out of state. We’ll see if that’s enough to sway skeptics. — NN
