TURN Energy Accomplishments

The utility companies like to spin each rate hike as just a few pennies, but consumers know they add up. TURN knows it too, and we are always there to oppose unjustified rate hikes whether they are big or small. The nickels and dimes we save you on your electric and gas bills add up to millions in savings every year. With consumers struggling with unemployment and other economic woes, keeping essentials like electricity and heat affordable is more crucial than ever.

In addition to an economic disaster, consumers are facing an urgent environmental crisis—global warming. Efforts to address that disaster are driving monthly electric and gas bills higher and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. TURN is unique in combining the concerns of planet and pocketbook to make sure you get the most green for the least green. In the past year, we demanded better energy efficiency programs, advocated for affordable renewable energy and fought overpriced solutions of dubious value.

Thousands of Californians save even more by visiting our website to get valuable tips on conserving energy and saving money. TURN helps consumers take advantage of utility discount and rebate programs and learn new ways to be smart consumers and take action to stop rate hike and utility cost-shifting and support pro-consumer legislation.

Maintaining Low-Income CARE Rates

Southern California Gas Company wanted to provide a discount to Guardian, a big business customer, by discounting Guardian’s required contributions to public purpose programs, including the vital CARE program that provides special energy rates for eligible low-income Californians. If the discount were approved by the CPUC, other utilities were expected to seek similar discounts for their large, wealthy corporate customers.

TURN led a coalition of consumer groups in fighting to retain the current system that requires all customers to contribute to public programs on the basis of how much energy they use. The discounts proposed by the utility companies would have required small residential customers to pay more or else would have meant cuts in funding for low-income and energy efficiency programs. The CPUC agreed with TURN and other small customer representatives and rejected the proposal to discount rates for the large customers. Residential rates did not go up, and CARE funding remained intact.

Blocked Expansion of Payday Lenders as Utility Bill Vendors

One of the utilities’ favorite ways to cut costs is to eliminate their local offices and replace them with pay stations that do not provide customer service or information but would be able to accept bill payments. TURN learned that many of these pay stations were "payday" lenders that charge exorbitant rates of interest for short-term loans. These payday lenders usually prey on low-income communities, and are happy to have additional access to potential customers that may be desperate for cash to pay their basic household bills.

TURN won a ruling preventing utility companies from expanding their use of payday lenders and has won commitments from utility companies to find alternative businesses to use as pay stations.

CARE Rates for Everyone Who Needs Them

TURN supported, and the Governor signed, legislation that would allow qualified master-metered customers—particularly mobile homeowners—to receive low-income discounts under the CARE program (AB 2857, Lieber, D-Mountain View).

The bill ensures all consumers get the rates they are entitled to and that master-metered tenants are not discriminated against.

TURN knows that consumers are concerned about the environment—and about making ends meet. That’s why we advocate for programs that will save you both energy and money and oppose excessive and unnecessary subsidies. TURN demands renewable energy at a fair price and effective, low-cost energy efficiency programs that get you the most green for the least green.

Maximizing The Impact Of Energy Efficiency Programs

Broadening energy efficiency programs to target water use and associated energy use can be a good idea if done correctly. When the CPUC decided to do so, TURN played a critical role in ensuring that changes to the programs were in ratepayers’ interests and maximized opportunities for low-income customers to participate in the programs. TURN also won requirements that utility program performance be measured and verified in order to make sure that customers receive the promised benefits.

Saving Money And The Planet At The Same Time

Many TURN members already know how to take advantage of tiered rates to conserve electricity and keep their bills low.  But the utility companies have not done enough to help their customers realize the savings available through tiered rates.  That should change with the passage of AB 1763 (Blakeslee, R-San Luis Obispo). This bill requires utility companies to provide understandable information to ratepayers about tiered rates.  Saving a relatively small amount of electricity can result in big savings on monthly bills due to tiered rates.

Turn Saves Consumers $600 Million

Consumers saved $600 million thanks to TURN’s active opposition to an expensive, unnecessary plan for an academic institute to study climate change. The institute, a brainchild of CPUC President Michael Peevey, would have been paid for by through bill surcharges applicable to customers of the regulated utilities, although its research would have supposedly benefited everyone. The institute would have been hosted at the University of California, and it would have no direct relation to utility service.

TURN did not object to the goals of the institute, but did object to its funding source—ratepayers. Adding surcharges to ratepayers’ bills for unrelated charges clearly exceeds the CPUC’s jurisdiction, and would amount to a tax from which customers of municipal utilities would have been exempt. Unfortunately, the CPUC approved the scheme over TURN’s objections.

TURN took the fight to Sacramento, where we organized legislative opposition, and to the media, where the San Diego Union Tribune editorialized that the institute was a “bizarre departure” from the CPUC’s constitutional mission. TURN’s legal staff demanded a rehearing. In the face of all of this pressure, the CPUC finally realized it had no choice but to scrap the unpopular and wasteful plan.

$145 Million Refund to Edison Customers

Edison fraudulently claimed millions in incentives for good customer satisfaction and worker safety. In fact, Edison had doctored its customer satisfaction and safety reports. Employees responding to management pressure for higher scores had tainted results and even falsified data.

Edison claimed the problem was just a few bad apples, but the resulting investigation showed that was not the case, and that Edison had profited handsomely from the scheme. TURN worked with the CPUC’s Consumer Protection and Safety Division and Division of Ratepayer Advocates to force Edison to refund the ill-gotten rewards to customers and pay millions in fines.

Defeating Big Business Subsidy Schemes

TURN often defends residential and small business consumers against attempts by the utility companies to offer big business customers discounted rates by shifting costs to small residential and business consumers. In PG&E’s last rate case, we fought back when PG&E proposed higher rates for small business and residential consumers in order to subsidize lower rates for big businesses, and won important new consumer protections in the process.

TURN successfully negotiated a rate increase that cut PG&E’s greedy grab in half and stopped a particularly heartless scheme (even for PG&E) to raise the rates paid by low-income Californians participating in the CARE (California Alternate Rates for Energy) program. In addition, TURN won consumer protections for small commercial customers whose landlords submeter their electric service.