Opinion: Will California promote out its clear power insurance policies to assist energy AI?

Almost 30 years in the past California legislators confronted a check of their integrity in voting for an electrical energy deregulation scheme that ratepayers are nonetheless paying for. They voted unanimously to throw Californians to the wolves of Enron. Later this month a brand new technology of California legislators will face an analogous check.

The invoice in query basically modifications our electrical energy market from a California-only market to a Western regional market.  To take action, legislators are throwing out protections put in place after the Enron disaster that require that California’s electrical energy market and grid be in keeping with Californians’ pursuits and run to reduce value and maximize provide. In different phrases, the invoice permits regardless of the market will bear, and that doesn’t often end up good for customers.

Making the market regional additionally places our environmental legal guidelines, together with our Renewable Portfolio Requirements, which units the targets for decarbonization, within the sights of Trump’s Federal Power Regulation Fee (FERC).  The minute California turns into a regional market, FERC has jurisdiction to invalidate our legal guidelines and any participant within the regional market, together with coal plant homeowners, can problem our environmental legal guidelines.

Given California Democrats’ dedication to stopping world warming, it needs to be unthinkable that they might get behind such a proposal. Actually, the final two instances the proposal got here up, they voted it down for these very causes.

What drive might be nice sufficient for California to cede its proper to dictate its power coverage to Trump and coal plant homeowners?  Google, Amazon, Microsoft and the remainder of the “Magnificent Seven” firms that want increasingly more electrical energy for his or her information facilities to energy their AI.  Together with PacifiCorp, the Warren Buffet-owned utility with Western regional coal crops, these Silicon Valley firms are powering this transfer.

Becker claims to have put in “guardrails,” however they’re meaningless. For instance, the California Unbiased System Operator (CAISO) will run the grid, however the energy over market guidelines will nonetheless be set by a regional group topic to Trump’s FERC.  CAISO might want to vote in 2027 to drag the set off, however CAISO is SB 540’s largest booster.

California already buys and sells electrical energy all through the West with out ceding energy to a regional operator, simply not in sufficient amount for the inexhaustible starvation of AI information facilities.

Along with being an environmentalist, Becker can also be an investor in AI expertise. His disclosure kinds, which solely present ranges for his investments, present between $250,000 and $3.5 million invested in an AI-driven inventory portfolio.  His guess shouldn’t be California’s guess.

Jamie Court docket is the president of the nonprofit advocacy group Shopper Watchdog.