Re: Re: CA electricity conservation

[Eugene Coyle <eugenecoyle@xxxxxxx>]

Nathan,

    It seems pretty simple.  The Greens, Global Exchange, consumer groups, et.
al. simply didn't want a transfer of wealth from customers to plundering
generators.  And/or a transfer to bailout the incumbent utilities from their
financial distress = bankruptcy.

    So what's to perplex you?

    By the way, California -- in the residential class -- has had tiered rates
since 1975.

Gene Coyle

Nathan Newman wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jim Devine" <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> -well, today I got our newest Southern California Edison bill (which thanks
> -the gods & goddesses isn't that large compared to last month), complete
> -with two signs of California's efforts to conserve.
> -1) a complex system of tiered rates, where the cost per kilowatt hour rises
> -as the amount of kilowatts rises relative to the "baseline allocation."
> -Though unnecessarily complex, it does encourage conservation.
> -2) a promised 20% credit for customers who used 20 percent less energy
> -during June to September, compared to the same period last year.
>
> One of the oddest things in the whole electricity crisis is that the
> progressive activists, especially around Meda Benjamin and the Greens,
> campaigned AGAINST the tiered rate increases, calling for maintaining the
> old single tier of lower rates.   This was one case where I didn't think the
> Greens were strategically wrong but were actually substantively more
> conservative and wrongheaded than the establishment PUC politicians.
>
> I've actually been perplexed by the reactionary position against the tiered
> rate increases and haven't gotten a good answer from why this strategy was
> adopted.  I actually thought a lot of progressives were extremely slow to
> target FERC and the out-of-state energy producers, instead prefering to
> attack the PUC and PG&E - bad guys who screwed up the system but not the
> prime bad guys in maintaining the current crisis.
>
> Any folks on the Left Coast have insight into why progressives have had this
> strategic posture?
>
> -- Nathan Newman