There is rarely a shortage of self-destructive bills in the California Legislature when lawmakers come back from their summer recess and get ready to confront the real consequences of proposed laws that have already passed one legislative house. Perhaps this year’s best example as legislators arrive back in town this August will be a bill known as SB 540 and sponsored by Silicon Valley’s Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park.
This bill would essentially end California’s ability to decide what kind of electric energy it will use for all time to come. It throws out Enron-era protections against price manipulation and essentially gives the Trump administration control over this state’s environmental laws. Yes, coal could be back, if that’s what President Trump or utility executives in states like Idaho and Utah want to impose on Californians. And they do.
This summer has already given ample evidence of how poorly Trump and his minions understand California. First, they had the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency conduct a wave of raids across Southern California, claiming they were going after criminal illegal immigrants.
They did in fact arrest and deport a few undocumented persons with serious criminal records. But most raids were conducted at restaurants, car washes and building supply stores where the undocumented often seek day work. These aroused crowds of thousands, almost all of whom protested peacefully, even though there was some vandalism, mostly at night when crowds had thinned.
Trump responded by nationalizing and calling out thousands of National Guard troops, excoriating Newsom for interfering with federal operations when he did nothing of the sort and threatening mass arrests. All while local police and sheriff’s deputies already had things under control.
There is no reason to believe Trump understands the California electric grid any better than he understands how Californians protest and react to what many see as injustice.
That’s what makes the Western grid envisioned in SB 540 so potentially pernicious. This bill, strongly backed by Google and other Silicon Valley giants, would give much of the power to determine where and what kind of power plants would be placed around the West to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
That agency is now controlled by Trump appointees who outspokenly advocate for coal power. Californians who want cleaner energy and more solar and wind power will be overruled, just as Newsom was when Trump ordered out the National Guard. So much for California’s independence or control over its own energy fate.
Of course, big California companies purveying currently trendy artificial intelligence are all for this. They’re building more and more data centers in the rural west, including parts of California’s Central Valley, and they need huge new power supplies.
Yes, some senators voiced concerns about Trump pre-empting California laws to provide this — and the lack of legislative oversight in the bill. However, that did not keep the vote in the state Senate from going 33-1 to advance this deregulation law.
As the bill moved through Senate committees, amendments were added to require minimizing costs and maximizing supply, as well as some transparency. All those amendments disappeared before the final vote, though, and would need to be reinstated by the state Assembly — unless it is similarly intimidated by the high-tech support for this measure.
One analysis by the Senate Judiciary Committee was especially on point: “California could see significant harms to its energy goals and its standing in the regional market,” the committee staff said. “These dangers are even greater now that Trump has … directed the U.S. attorney general to find ways to curtail our state’s climate change efforts.”
Still, many Democrats with strong environmental records went along with this, even approving the repeal of protections against price gouging. It’s all a way for artificial intelligence firms to control the electric market for their benefit with little or no transparency for millions of other consumers. It is certainly daring but could also yield an Enron-like disaster if they hoard power and force prices up.
Only this time, the law would not allow California to solve the problem on its own but rather would keep it tethered to other states that don’t care a bit about California consumers. All this stupidity is only part of what makes SB 540 perhaps the year’s dumbest bill.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com, and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.