electricity rates

California electricity consumers may receive cap-and-trade dividend

 As I mentioned on Monday, the 23.1 million greenhouse gas (GHG) allowances (current-vintage) sold at the cap-and-trade auction on Monday were all consigned to auction by utility companies. The $233 million generated by that sale must now be used by those utilities to the benefit of ratepayers. Last Friday, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued its …

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The Cost of Renewable Energy Put Into Perspective

Would you be willing to pay 3 ½ cents a day to reduce the pollution from the electric power you use by 40%? In a recent article, the San Francisco Chronicle talked about the high price of adding renewable energy to the grid. Citing a study prepared by the California Public Utilities Commission’s Division of …

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Prop 23 and PG&E: Setting the Record Straight

The California Jobs Initiative is spreading a highly misleading story about PG&E’s opposition to Prop 23, the ballot measure to suspend California’s keystone climate legislation (AB 32).  The story appears in an email that they’ve circulated widely.  To make it easy to understand, I’m leaving the truthful parts of their story in black and putting …

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Does anybody really know what electricity costs? Does anybody really care?

Just about everything that energy utilities and their regulators do has some kind of  impact on the environment – even when all they are doing is setting electricity rates.  So, when PG&E (California’s largest electric company) proposed a new residential rate structure last week, some were left wondering: as far as the environment is concerned, …

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