Subject: Newshour with Jim Lehrer - California Power Prices
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Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 05:49:00 -0800 (PST)

F.Y.I.

  Date      November 30, 2000
      Time      07:00 PM - 08:00 PM
      Station   PBS
      Location  Network
      Program   The Newshour With Jim Lehrer

              Ray Suarez, co-anchor:

              Finally, it's the latest hot idea for reducing energy
              costs.  Twenty-three states have enacted legislation to
              deregulate electricity rates and sixteen others are
              thinking about it, but California's pioneering efforts have
              already provoked an angry consumer backlash.  Spencer
              Michaels reports.

              Spencer Michaels reporting:

              In a San Diego strip mall, the owner of the tiny Youngling
              Oriental Vegetarian Market is having a hard time.  Yuman
              (?) Young owes two thousand dollars to San Diego Gas &
              Electric--SDG&E--an amount he can't come up with.  Like
              many San Diegans, his electricity bill has skyrocketed this
              year.

              So this is your bill in March, right?

              Yuman Young (Youngling Oriental Vegetarian Market):  Right.

              Michaels:  And the bill is--

              Young:  And see, in March, the bill comes to about four
              seventy-eight.

              Michaels:  Then we have May.

              Young:  In May, it...

              Michaels:  Then we're up--

              Young:  ...goes to six seventy something.

              Michaels:  Six seventy-four.

              Young:  Yeah.

              Michaels:  And then--

              Young:  And then...

              Michaels:  And then we skip...

              Young:  ...we skip a month.

              Michaels:  ...June, but in July--

              Young:  And the--then in July, it goes to about thirteen
              hundred dollars.

              Michaels:  Thirteen hundred dollars?

              Young:  Yeah.

              Michaels:  And the same in August?

              Young:  And the same in August.

              Michaels:  Over thirteen hundred dollars.

              Young:  Yeah, right.

              Michaels:  Young's main electricity expense is his frozen
              food freezer that he keeps at minus seventeen degrees.  But
              people without such appliances have seen residential and
              commercial bills double and triple as well.  San Diego is
              the first California city to suffer the effects of the
              deregulation of electricity, which was enacted by the state
              legislature in 1996.  The theory was that by taking away
              the monopolies enjoyed by state-regulated utility
              companies, like SDG&E, new competition among electricity
              producers would result in a drop in rates.  But since such
              simple market economics would take awhile, the legislature
              imposed a temporary rate freeze to protect most parts of
              the state from higher prices.  In San Diego, the freeze
              came off this year letting the market set the price, a
              very high price.  SDG&E is owned by Sempra Energy, where
              Stephen Baum is CEO.

              Stephen Baum (Chief Executive Officer, Sempra Energy):
              It's been a terrible shock to our customers, seeing
              real-time prices for the first time.  And those prices are
              way out of sight because the wholesale market is broken and
              needs to be fixed.

              Michaels:  The vast wholesale market is something new.
              California utilities used to own most of the power plants,
              the high-voltage transmission lines and the system to
              deliver power to homes and businesses.  Under deregulation
              the utilities still deliver the power, but had to turn
              operations of the transmission lines over to a state
              agency.  In addition, they had to sell their power plants.
              So now almost all power is sold to the utilities on a
              wholesale basis by producers or generators.  And according
              to Baum, they charge what they can get.

              Baum:  There's been a very large wealth transfer from the
              customers in the state of California to the generators.  We
              don't think the market's workably competitive.  There
              aren't enough players and there's not enough generation.
              Until that occurs, you're going to have dislocations at
              very high prices.

              Michaels:  The situation keeps getting worse as
              California's population keeps increasing, especially in the
              hot central valley.  Air conditioners and other appliances
              put a strain on a system already stressed by increased
              demand in other states where some of California's power
              comes from.  According to University of California
              economist Severin Borenstein, deregulation has aggravated
              the already tight situation.

              Severin Borenstein (University of California, Berkeley):
              Production in the state has really been stretched and that
              does two things:  One, is it naturally just creates a tight
              supply/demand situation that's going to drive prices up.
              The other thing it does, though, is it also puts the
              producers in a very strong position to push prices up even
              higher.  And, I think, there's no question the generators
              are trying to make as much money as they can.

              Michaels:  Duke Energy, headquartered in North Carolina, is
              one of the new generators in the California market.  Duke
              spokesman Tom Williams says much of its power was sold
              before prices rose and that profits are plowed back into
              new plants.

              The utilities and the consumer groups seem to think that
              the generators are making a lot of money on this crisis.
              Is that true?

              Tom Williams (Duke Energy Corporation):  Duke Energy sells
              the bulk of its power in the--in the forward market.  It
              was sold a year ago for the plants we have in the state
              now.  So the power's already been sold, and the price of
              natural gas has gone up two and a half times since last
              summer.  So there is a very tight supply situation, but
              we're reinvesting our profits back into the market to fix
              the problem.
              Michaels:  In fact, Duke is investing 1.1 billion dollars
              to modernize two inefficient power plants it bought from
              the utilities.  As part of the deal it also had to buy
              this old PG&E plant in Oakland, which has been running
              overtime because of the power shortage.  Over the last two
              decades only a few companies have actually begun
              construction of new power plants because of what they saw
              as the uncertainties of the regulatory climate.  This plant
              near San Francisco, being built by Calpine, will supply
              enough electricity for half a million homes.  It will be
              ready by next summer.  Calpine vice president, James
              Macias, says his company predicted the shortage of power
              and took a risk.

              James Macias (Vice President, Calpine):  You could see the
              fundamentals forming of the need for more--more power.
              There hasn't been a big power plant like this built in the
              state for--for decades.

              Michaels:  Macias says the utilities should have contracted
              for power at lower rates before it was actually needed.  He
              expects that the profits power companies are making now
              will decline as more power comes on line.

              Macias:  We're doing pretty good.  We're being rewarded for
              having the vision and the foresight to come in here and
              build this--this--this needed supply.  But they're not
              going to last.  As soon as this--more of the supply comes
              in, the prices will come down and they'll be--they'll be
              depressed again.  They have to come down.  This economy,
              again, can't support these high prices.

              Michaels:  Although twenty new plants are in the planning
              stages, it takes five years to design and build just one.
              With very little additional supply in the immediate
              pipeline, the director of San Diego's utility watchdog
              group, Utility Consumers Action Network, says regulators
              must get involved to return rates to reasonable levels.

              Michael Shames (Consumer Advocate):  They could have
              immediately put--reinstated a price cap.  They could have
              immediately said, hold on a second folks.  We're not going
              to tolerate this.  We're not going to see a region like San
              Diego thrust into a depression.

              Michaels:  But Michael Shames says some legislators and
              regulators were ruled by their uncompromising belief in a
              free-market ideology.

              Shames:  There were a number of people, well-placed people,
              who were so ideologically driven to force competition to
              work in a market such as energy that they didn't want to
              look at the signs when they saw that the experiment wasn't
              working.  They didn't want to acknowledge it wasn't
              working, and they were prepared to sacrifice a city, San
              Diego, a state, California, and possibly a country, in
              order to see their ideologically driven vision--vision
              work.  (Clip from a TV commercial)

              Michaels:  Shames' consumer group was so outraged at the
              price increases they bought TV ads and urged civil
              disobedience.

              Dianne Jacob (Chair, San Diego County Supervisor):  Join me
              and other San Diegans and let's send a message.  Pay only
              what is fair.  When your SDG&E bill comes, pay what you
              paid last summer.  That's fair.

              Michaels:  At the California Public Utilities Commission,
              President Loretta Lynch agrees that regulators could remedy
              the situation, but she says it's not up to the state.
              Only the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has the power
              to cut back prices.

              Loretta Lynch (California Public Utilities Commission):  If
              the federal government allowed power plant owners to make a
              reasonable profit instead of an excessive profit, then that
              would drop the price of wholesale power.  And if that price
              dropped we would not be in the pickle we're in today.

              Michaels:  Federal Energy Regulatory Commission president,
              James Hoecker, replies that simply using price controls
              discourages investment in an industry that needs it.

              James Hoecker (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission):  What
              my friend, President Lynch, has said reflects a kind of
              thinking that markets can never be made to work and that
              ultimately we have to resort to cost-based, profit kinds of
              regulation of utilities.  And I think that this market has
              marched past that as an option.

              Michaels:  In November, the Federal Energy Regulatory
              Commission proposed a major change.  Utilities would not be
              required to buy power from the power exchange--a kind of
              stock market for electricity where prices have soared.
              Instead, the utilities will be able to buy directly from
              producers.  The federal agency has launched an
              investigation into California's troubles, hoping for a
              long-term solution.

              Unidentified Woman:  This legislation, today, has the
              ability to provide immediate and real relief to San
              Diegans.

              Michaels:  The California legislature struggled this year
              with what to do, short term, for the people of San Diego.
              The debate centered around a proposal to cap electricity
              bills at sixty-five dollars a month, retroactive to June 1.

              Charlene Zettel (Assembly Member, Republican, San Diego):
              What is San Diego's problem today will be California's
              problem tomorrow.

              Rico Oller (Assembly Member, Republican, San Diego):  You
              know who we can thank for this problem?  You want to get
              right down to brass tacks?  You can thank all of the
              knuckle-headed people in this legislature and in
              government, in general--in general, who have stood in the
              way of doing the smart and sensible thing that anyone would
              have the sense to do in the real world, and that is to
              provide for their future needs by increasing production.
              We need to build some facilities to produce power.

              Unidentified Man:  All debate having ceased, the clerk will
              open the roll.  All members vote who desire to vote.

              Michaels:  The San Diego rate cap passed, but the state is
              still far from a solution.  Higher electric rates are
              forecasted for the rest of the state as the caps come off
              in other cities.  And even more troubling is the fact that
              the price rollback is being bankrolled by the utilities,
              since they still have to pay the generators for the power
              but can't pass those prices on to their customers.

              Economist Borenstein says other states better examine
              California's experience before proceeding with
              deregulation.

              Borenstein:  I think most states that are deregulating
              right now, if they have a tight supply situation, are very
              likely to see spikes just like ours.  The best advice I
              think for most of these states is to take a break, not move
              forward on their deregulation, watch the experiments that
              are going on in California and New York and Pennsylvania
              and Texas and a number of other states and learn from them,
              because we're learning a lot from them as we do this.

              Michaels:  The success or failure of deregulation across
              the country will depend partly on easy access to power
              transmission lines so that electricity can be transferred
              more readily to where it's needed.  The federal government
              is working on that problem.

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