The California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously last week to charge electricity and natural gas customers $600 million over the next 10 years to fund a think tank for green initiatives.
The organization will be called the California Institute for Climate Solutions and will be associated with the University of California. It will be funded by a surcharge on customer bills of investor-owned utilities. Customers of municipal utilities in Los Angeles and Sacramento will not be charged.
Estimates show the average customer of the state’s three largest utilities will pay an extra 25 cents per month.
The measure was criticized by the consumer group Toward Utility Rate Normalization.
"Electric bills should not become a blank check for all of the Cal PUC’s pet projects," said TURN Executive Director Mark Toney. "Consumers are already paying their fair share for renewable energy and conservation programs. Forcing them to pay more for an expensive academic exercise that may or may not provide benefits in the end is simply going too far."
Although the measure was unanimously approved, three Cal PUC commissioners, including John Bohn, were not 100% behind the plan.
"We are, in short, telling the ratepayers that as a condition of receiving essential utility services, delivered by monopoly enterprises under our jurisdiction, they are required to pay for research and commercialization of technologies that may never deliver results," Bohn said.
Cal PUC President Michael R. Peevey said funding research in technologies will help ratepayers by finding cost-effective solutions to global warming.
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