The California Public Utilities Commission appears to be winning broad backing for its plan to replace about $250 million/year of expiring public goods surcharge money for energy efficiency with higher utility rate collections. There would be little net difference, if any, in the amount that electric utility customers pay. Instead, it merely would change how the money is collected by replacing surcharge revenue due to expire at the end of this year with money collected through existing utility procurement energy efficiency balancing accounts. Utilities would top off those accounts by hiking the rates they charge their customers to make up for the loss of public goods money. The public goods charge--which the Legislature chose not to renew this past session--has been in place since the 1990s. Among other things, it provides about a quarter of the $1 billion/year needed for the state’s investor-owned utility energy efficiency programs. The charge also raises another $150 million/year that the California Energy Commission uses to subsidize renewable energy and carry out energy research and development. In a separate proceeding, the CPUC may replace that money with an additional utility rate hike (Current, Oct. 14, 2011). Swift action is needed to adequately fund already approved utility energy efficiency programs next year, Division of Ratepayer Advocates attorney Diana Lee wrote in a filing with the commission on Oct. 12. She urged the commission to require utilities to use unspent energy efficiency funds next year toward replacing lost public goods revenue before increasing rates for customers. DRA estimates the state’s three major investor-owned power utilities are sitting on between $23.5 million and $31 million of money they have collected but not spent on efficiency programs. Utilities also endorsed the proposal in filings earlier this month. However, they told the commission it did not need to make any decision on the matter, since they already have authority to collect the money and put it in their energy efficiency balancing accounts. The Natural Resources Defense Council backed the commission’s plan, but like ratepayer advocates, it asked the commission to make an affirmative decision on replacing the public goods charge money with the added utility collections for energy efficiency. Failing to raise the money, wrote NRDC energy efficiency policy director Lara Ettenson, “would significantly undermine the ability of the utilities to capture the full amount of energy savings” planned under their efficiency programs.
