TURN Gets You More Green for Your Green
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.
