California needs to get real on energy policy. Green slogans and good intentions won’t work. - OCRegister

California needs to get real on energy policy. Green slogans and good intentions won’t work. - Orange County Register

If you see birds perched on power lines in California, they might be chickens coming home to roost.

A group of Democratic lawmakers are now supporting legislation to reverse a state mandate requiring investor-owned utilities to base their residential customers’ electricity bills on household income.

This was a provision of Assembly Bill 205 in 2022, and many of the Democrats now complaining about it happen to be the same ones who voted for it. They say, now, that it should have had more consideration instead of being rushed through as part of a budget “trailer bill” without any hearings in the relevant policy committees.

“AB 205 should have had a very robust conversation,” said Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks.

Yet Irwin and every other Democrat in the Assembly at the time voted for AB 205 and so did all but four Democrats in the Senate. Republicans raised concerns early and often, and were ignored.

AB 205 removed the cap on the fixed charge for being connected to the grid and requires Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric to restructure the rates they charge their customers. The law mandates the utilities to charge fixed rates for “infrastructure” that are based on a customer’s household income, with three tiers to ensure that low-income customers pay less than high-income customers. Volumetric rates, the cost for the amount of electricity used, would then be slightly lower.

Californians who bought solar panel installations and enjoyed a lower electricity bill will pay a much higher fixed charge to be connected to the grid.

Resistance to this plan has been building since last April, when the utilities released their proposed rates and tiers. Now the California Public Utilities Commission is facing a July 1 deadline to make a decision about approving and implementing the proposal. The utilities informed the CPUC last year that they want no part of verifying their customers’ household income.

The chickens have come home to roost not only for the lawmakers who could have refused to vote for this when they had the chance, but also for the state’s climate-conscious mandate to transition to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045, regardless of cost.

According to a 2021 joint report by the California Energy Commission, the CPUC and the Air Resources Board, the state would “need to build up to 6 gigawatts of new renewable and storage resources annually” for 25 years. “By comparison over the last decade, the state has built on average 1 GW of utility solar and 300 megawatts (MW) of wind per year,” the report states.

Who is going to pay for that? There are only two options: ratepayers and taxpayers. And they happen to be the same people.

The cost of a transition to all-electric vehicles and appliances, powered by 100% “clean” electricity, as the state defines it, is astronomical. Californians are already experiencing the effects, with electricity rates far above the national average and rising.

Irwin’s Assembly Bill 1999 would repeal the provision in AB 205 that requires income-graduated fixed charges for electricity and would cap the fixed charge at $10 for all customers ($5 for low-income customers enrolled in the CARE program), with an annual adjustment that does not exceed the increase in the Consumer Price Index for the prior year.

The cost of the state’s policies has yet to be addressed.