Municipal Movement Towards Greener Energy Thwarted by PG&E's Budgeted Aims

My Name is Sakura Saunders and I am with the Green Guerillas Against Greenwash, a citizens groups that recently formed out of disgust for PG&E's greenwashing campaign. We stand against dirty energy and towards a green, renewable, local, and affordable energy future. We also run letsGREENWASHthiscity.org

Our national government has failed to make strong commitments in reducing our greenhouse emissions, but a growing movement of municipalities are taking local action to promote green energy. For instance, over 418 mayors representing over 60 million Americans have signed onto the " U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement," requiring cities to meet or beat Kyoto Protocol targets. In 2002, California signed into law "Community Choice Aggregation," or CCA, which allows communities to control who they buy their energy from.  48 cities and counties in California are in fact actively exploring it's implementation, and CCA feasibility studies in 22 cities show that a 40 percent renewable energy can be achieved with no rate increase. This is because independent energy providers are not already invested in dirty and high maintenance forms of energy.

The San Francisco board of Supervisors has already approved Community Choice Aggregation, a well-researched plan that would have San Francisco running on 50 percent renewables by 2017. This would produce enough renewable energy (360 MW) to account for 1/6 of PG&E's Diablo Nuclear Plant's output.

A number of expenses in the CPUC budget for PG&E work directly against the implementation of CCA for cities across California.

The budget permits PG&E lobbying expenses and public relations monies that explicitly go toward lobbying for dirty energy, and that PG&E has used in the past to fight public power campaigns.

Also, by allowing PG&E to sign long-term gas contracts, the Public Utilities Commission is effectively locking the public into a contract with PG&E. Because long-term contracts cause the exit fees for implementing CCA to be much more expensive.

In a time when our national government is complacent in the face of climate change, it is city governments that are taking the lead.
 
Given the state-wide movement towards Community Choice Aggregation – with the California legislature's passage supporting CCA in 2002 and 48 communities actively considering this policy – we urge the CPUC to help communities successfully implement this policy, or at the very least refrain from supporting obstacles to our right to choose an affordable green energy infrastructure.

PG&E is working to prevent communities from choosing to aggregate – and PG&E's general rate case forces us to pay for this shady practice that opposed our own public interest.  We call on the CPUC to reverse its Opinion authorizing PG&E to:

1)    charge ratepayers to pay ($4.35 million) for its Customer Retention & Economic Development program;

2)    to reconsider all funding related to long-term investments in nuclear and LNG infrastructure in relation to the state-wide movement towards Community Choice;

3)    and to revoke and audit all money given to PG&E's lobbying-related activities.

Our group went through the PG&E General Rate Case – a 400 page budget document. If you are interested in our findings please find one of us and ask for our literature.

Thank you.