CPUC Entertains Confidentiality Requests

Responses to a California Public Utilities Commission proceeding to determine what data are secret and what are public indicate that the commission's stakeholders want some level of secrecy to remain. Commissioners have directed staff to revise outdated confidentiality practices. The goal is to facilitate greater public participation, ensure open decision making, and foster a more competitive electricity market. The CPUC is taking a different approach on confidentiality than the California Energy Commission. In the CEC's September 15 Draft 2005 Integrated Energy Policy Report, that commission relies only on public information for its policy, and reveals concerns about the CPUC's methods. "Energy Commission staff has been allowed access to CPUC confidential IOU data upon signing non-disclosure agreements. This practice is deeply troubling," the report notes. In responding to the CPUC's rulemaking order on confidentiality, utilities asserted that the commission possesses ample regulatory authority to protect ratepayers from undue harm and ensure reasonable contracts without disclosing market-sensitive information, such as contract prices, terms, and conditions. Pacific Gas & Electric argued that if such information were publicly disclosed, suppliers would use it to their competitive advantage to obtain the optimum price for their power. Southern California Edison identified four types of "extremely valuable" information that would place utilities at a competitive disadvantage and facilitate market manipulation if publicly disclosed. They are terms, quantity, conditions, and prices that utilities are willing to pay for power. Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric both argued that nondisclosure requirements should apply not only to procurement but also to CPUC proceedings on community-choice aggregation, demand response, distributed generation, energy efficiency, qualifying facility contracts, renewables portfolio standards, and transmission. The Office of Ratepayer Advocates and The Utility Reform Network jointly submitted a proposed model for transparency, which they argued would rectify inequities in the CPUC's obsolete confidentiality practices while guarding against potential market abuses. The CPUC's current framework for confidentiality is unworkable because it bars market participants from access to any information that the utilities claim needs protection. To achieve transparency, they propose that the CPUC establish a process that will enable market participants to know what information has been redacted and made confidential. It would also set a greater transparency standard to enable all interested parties to review the renewables portfolio standard program. The Independent Energy Producers insisted that the terms and conditions of utility contracts with the Department of Water Resources and QFs have been publicly disclosed without any detriment. IEP recommended that the confidentiality of short-term contracts should be limited to 24 months and that there is no need to protect long-term load forecasts. By contrast, the utilities' confidentiality requirements would result in "black box" decision making and transfer control over procurement-related information to the utilities, counter to the CPUC's goal of fostering openness and transparency, IEP said. Constellation New Energy and Coral Power claimed that commercially sensitive information provided by unregulated energy service providers should be kept confidential for four years to serve the greater public interest. Constellation and the Alliance for Retail Energy Markets both argued that the law requiring the CPUC rulemaking doesn't require that all parties have equal access to market-sensitive information.

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CPUC Entertains Confidentiality Requests

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