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Press Release |
Contact: Robin Kane or Judith Bell |
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Consumers Union, nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, supports two new bills that would improve the benefits of electric deregulation for California’s residential customers. As currently structured, California’s electric deregulation plan offers little real benefit to most California consumers.
AB 579 would increase the residential and small business electric rate cut from its current 10 percent to 20 percent. AB 1154 would relieve small customers from paying the state’s three utilities billions of dollars to bail out nuclear power plants that will not produce competitive energy in a deregulated market. Assemblymember Diane Martinez (D-Monterey Park) introduced both measures, which will be heard before the Assembly Utilities & Commerce Committee on Monday, January 12. Prior to the hearing, bill supporters will participate in a press conference in Sacramento.
“These measures are an opportunity for the Legislature to give California consumers a break,” said Judith Bell. “The original deregulation law gives money to the utilities for their old bad investments and creates a market that will lower rates dramatically for big industrial energy users. But the law offers residential customers only a self-financed rate cut, and a market that doesn’t encourage new companies to truly compete for our business.”
“AB 579 fulfills the Legislature’s promise of a real rate cut, rather than the phony one we’re getting now,” Bell said. “And AB 1154 ensures that the utility companies bear the burden of their risky nuclear investments that didn’t live up to their promises.”
The original start date for electric deregulation in California was January 1. That date has now been postponed until March 31. Since California’s passage of an electric deregulation plan in 1996, several other states have proposed plans that provide greater benefit to their state’s residential customers.
“We hope the Legislature will seize this opportunity to give California consumers real benefit in the deregulated electric market,” Bell said.
[For a copy of Consumers Union’s letters of support for these measures, call Robin Kane at 415-431-6747.]
