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Updated May 10 The California Public Utilities Commission approved a transition to time-of-use power rates for residential customers beginning in spring of 2019 for San Diego Gas & Electric and in fall of 2020 for Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison. The commission okayed the schedule at its meeting May 10. Initially, the commission planned on the transition beginning for each of the three major investor-owned power utilities next year. CPUC President Mike Picker explained this week that Edison and PG&E need more time. Specifically, Edison needs to complete replacing its billing system before the transition and PG&E, among other things, needs more time to coordinate with community choice aggregators in its area. A bill reviving the federal licensing process to build a high level radioactive nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, passed the House May 10. The House voted 340-72 to approve the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017 by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Il). Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) said the “bill is dead on arrival to the U.S. Senate. Plain and simple.” Pacific Gas & Electric this week opened a new wildfire safety operations center, which will be staffed 24/7, the utility said. It is to monitor potential fire threats across its service area and coordinate with first responders and public safety officials. The center will operate primarily during fire season and at other times as needed. PG&E meteorologists will monitor data from PG&E weather stations, as well as from public data bases, to identify developing situations. The center is located at the utility’s headquarters in San Francisco. California is feeling the significant and growing effects of climate change, according to a new report released May 9 that tracks 36 indicators of climate change and its impacts on the state. “As California works to both fight climate change and adapt to it, it is critical that we understand the dramatic impacts climate change is already having in our state,” said California Secretary for Environmental Protection Matthew Rodriquez. The report documents the growing number of extreme weather-related events in recent years, such as the devastating 2017 wildfires and the record-setting 2012-16 drought. Some of the long-term warming trends underlying these events, including the rise in average temperatures and the number of extremely hot days and nights, have accelerated in recent decades, the report shows. It also tracks a variety of other climate change indicators: the declining snowpack and dramatic retreat of glaciers in the Sierra Nevada, unprecedented tree mortality in California forests, a rise in ocean temperatures off the California coast, and the shifting ranges of many species of California plants and animals.

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