2/8 come to CPUC hearing in SF

Hello Everybody! Please come to this hearing & press conference & give support to the Judge - and Women's Energy Matters - for this investigation of utility energy efficiency scams!

If we win this one (and we're really close!) we'll have a much better chance of getting all the energy conservation money away from the utilities.

If conservation programs were run by responsible organizations - rather than run into the ground - California could meet all future energy demand with conservation and renewable energy.

- Barbara George

Remember: WHAT DO CHENEY, BUSH & KEN LAY FEAR THE MOST? CONSERVATION, RE-REGULATION AND PUBLIC POWER!

Women's Energy Matters, P.O. Box 12487, Berkeley CA 94712

Media Advisory 2/6/02
Contact: Barbara George, Exec. Dir., Women's Energy Matters
510-528-5104, 510-915-6215

Women's Energy Matters Challenges Utilities' Conservation Profits;
Judge Agrees; May Order Wider Investigation

Hearing 10 -11 am Fri., Feb. 8; Press Conference after the hearing


At a hearing at 10 am Friday, Feb. 8th in a courtroom at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), (505 Van Ness Ave.) California's big four investor-owned utilities are expected to face hard questions by Administrative Law Judge Christine Walwyn, regarding what they did with conservation money in the past decade. She will decide whether to continue and enlarge an investigation which began last June, 2001.

In a sea change from previous years at the CPUC, Judge Walwyn has pledged to spend however long it takes to figure out how much energy the utilities really saved, how much it cost - and whether there is any justification for "Shareholders' Incentives." Shareholders Incentives are an extra serving of profit that utilities were allowed to take since 1990, supposedly to convince them to do better conservation programs.

The Judge has echoed many of the questions raised by Women's Energy Matters (WEM), a public interest group that is challenging the incentives. WEM charges that the utilities waste hundreds of millions of dollars of ratepayer money on extraordinarily inefficient "energy efficiency" programs - and pocket hundreds of millions more in incentives. (Contact # above for WEM comments, hearing transcripts and utility claims.)

WEM is the only intervenor (participating member of the public) in the California Public Utilities' Commission's (CPUC) annual review of energy efficiency programs, the "Annual Earnings Assessment Proceeding." The Incentives are paid in yearly installments, and (for pre-deregulation programs) are supposed to be based on efficiency measures continuing to produce energy savings over the years. After deregulation, there was no requirement for the programs to prove energy savings.

Statewide, ratepayers pay about $250 million a year for energy efficiency; $142 million of Shareholders Incentives are on the table this year.

Barbara George, Executive Director of Women's Energy Matters, declared "We are very grateful for Judge Walwyn's commitment to look more deeply into where our conservation dollars went. We are finding that the utilities are lining shareholders' pockets while producing the least energy efficiency that they can get away with. They have a fundamental conflict of interest with conservation - they don't want to "unsell" their product. Shareholders' Incentives don't help, and should be ended immediately."

Women's Energy Matters calls for the Public Utilities Commission to take conservation funds completely out of the hands of the investor-owned utilities.