New California Law Could Expand Energy Trading Across the West
Source: Canary Media | By Jeff St. John
After years of failed attempts, California lawmakers have cleared the way to create an electricity-trading market that would stretch across the U.S. West. Advocates say that could cut the region’s power costs by billions of dollars and support the growth of renewable energy. But opponents say it may make the state’s climate and clean-energy policies vulnerable to the Trump administration.
“We’re strongly opposed,” said Matthew Freedman, staff attorney at The Utility Reform Network (TURN). Previous versions of the bill “had a bunch of provisions we thought would have protected California’s sovereignty and prevented the federal government from weaponizing its authority. Most of those protections were stripped from the bill, inexplicably.” In particular, in May, TURN and its allies pushed to add an amendment that would have created an oversight council including California lawmakers that would have had the authority to pull the state out of the market if they determined it would raise energy costs or work against the state’s carbon-emissions goals.
