Category: Energy

By Carolyn Chase

Why are our energy bills so high?

The Energy Industrial Complex is picking your pocket. The EIC in California consists of:

• The three for-profit monopolies: San Diego Gas & Electric, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison
• The CPUC – misnamed as the California Public Utility Commission – has ceased responsible oversight needed by ratepayers
• Politicians and appointees that fail to ask critical questions and go along with unnecessary rate increases.  They accept project designs that are the most profitable instead of designs that prioritize affordability and climate progress.

Forty-five years ago today — March 28th — Central Pennsylvania suffered a historic tragedy when one of the nuclear reactors at Three Mile Island experienced a partial meltdown.

The accident, which occurred at the Generating Station along the Susquehanna River on March 28, 1979, went down in history as the most serious nuclear power plant accident in United States history.

According to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, researchers were able to determine that the meltdown had “negligible effects on the physical health of individuals or the environment” — but that’s not to say there weren’t any lasting impacts.

Gas prices are on the rise across the country, but if you’re filling up your tank in California, you’re likely paying far more than travelers in other states, according to a new AAA study. California is ranked first out of the 10 U.S. states with the most expensive gas, according to the AAA study released last week. In California, travelers were paying about $4.86 per gallon — $1.47 higher than the national average of $3.39.

From Power San Diego

Creating a non-profit utility in the City of San Diego deserves serious cost-benefit analysis, said Bill Powers, chairman of the Power San Diego campaign, which is gathering signatures to put creation of a public electric utility on the ballot this November.

“Instead of serious analysis, SDGE has grossly inflated costs and completely ignored the benefits,” said Powers, a licensed electric systems engineer. “The utility seeks the veneer of independent review. But what their paid consultant says in footnotes and attributions is that the key data in their recent report came directly from SDGE, not from the consultant’s own assessments”

SDGE has already invested more than $560,000 in a political action committee to oppose the campaign for a non-profit utility.

By Erik Anderson / KPBS / March 18, 2024

San Diego Gas & Electric is going up in March, just a month after the utility reported record profits for 2023. The rate hike eliminates some savings from an unexpected 11% cut in delivery charges in January. The delivery charges jump 8.7% in the March billing cycle and the average customer bill will increase about $8 a month.

“Customers are still benefiting in March 2024, about a 6% savings than what they were spending in March of 2023,” SDG&E’s Anthony Wagner said. The move comes after the investor-owned utility posted record profits during the last calendar year. Company profits in 2023 hit a new record of $936 million, $21

Please take a moment to reflect on Japan’s Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima 13 years later, billions spent, unchecked meltdowns persist while contamination abounds with no end in sight.

Please watch this 12 minute video made especially for this somber occasion, and remember that it could still happen here too, with 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste 100 feet from the ocean at sea level, in a tsunami zone.

Should San Diegans have our own municipal utility that would replace SDG&E?

The Power San Diego Campaign believes so.  They’ve launched a signature drive to get the question on the November ballot. On their website, the group claims SDG&E has the highest rates in the nation (although just recently, this has changed), that SDG&E profits are $1 million dollars a day from San Diego City alone, and that 25% of SDGE’s customer are behind on their bills.

From San Clemente Green

This is truly a race against time, but many potential victims remain unaware of the threat. In approving the coastal permit, the California Coastal Commission (CCC) put in a condition that requires Edison to evaluate sea level rise in 2035. We are asking the CCC to take the initiative and request an analysis for conditions that may require moving Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) to higher ground. The time has come, sooner than expected and we can’t afford to wait for another decade or more to pass. The planning must begin now. You can help by signing our petition here, which is already well underway. We can’t wait until 2035 to re-evaluate sea level rise, as the permit currently is written.

More than a thousand residents in San Diego County were without power Monday afternoon amid a powerful storm system that is moving through the county.

At least more than 5,000 residents were impacted by the outages in the following areas:

Ocean Beach
San Diego Airport
Paradise Hills
Skyline … and more

..

Fox5SanDiego – AP / Dec. 14, 2023

California energy regulators voted Thursday to allow the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant to operate for an additional five years, despite calls from environmental groups to shut it down. The California Public Utilities Commission agreed to extend the shutdown date for the state’s last functioning nuclear power facility through 2030 instead of closing it in 2025 as previously agreed.

On Sunday’s Union-Tribune front page, reporter Rob Nikolewski wrote how and why SDG&E is making more money than ever. But it’s a “subscriber only” piece, and we’re only providing the first few paragraphs of the report here:

San Diego Gas & Electric is a very different company than it was just a few years ago. Rates charged to the 3.7 million people the utility serves continue to rise in large part because California utilities — not just SDG&E — have additional responsibilities to shoulder.

But SDG&E is also making more money than ever.

The Power San Diego Campaign today published its initiative to replace SDGE in the City with a not-for-profit, publicly-owned electric utility. Signature gathering to qualify the initiative for the City’s November 2024 ballot will begin in December.

“This is a campaign for those tired of paying the nation’s highest electric rates, for those tired of paying to provide more than $1 million of profits every day pocketed by SDGE,” said Bill Powers, chairman of the ballot campaign. “It’s a campaign to cut utility bills and tap the enormous rooftop solar potential in our community. ”