Golis: For state energy policy, it’s one mess after another

“Gov. Pete Wilson signed legislation Monday to deregulate the state’s electric utilities at the turn of the century and lower electrical bills for residential customers by at least 10%.” — Los Angeles Times news story, Sept. 24, 1996

Don’t laugh. Once upon a time, state leaders viewed deregulation as the ticket to the promised land, where energy would cost less, and no one needed to worry whether there would be enough electricity and natural gas to go around. The measure passed the Legislature without a dissenting vote.

In signing the bill, Wilson said, “This landmark legislation is a major step in our efforts to guarantee lower rates, provide consumer choice and offer reliable service, so no one literally is left in the dark.”

OK, go ahead and laugh.

Twenty-six years later, we understand that mistakes were made. Now we wait to find out how we can secure reliable — and safe — supplies of energy to power future prosperity.

As the New York Times reported (see Monday’s Press Democrat), “California finds itself on edge more than ever with a lingering fear: the threat of rolling blackouts for years to come.”

In the Sept. 4 Forum section, you may have read an excerpt from a new book, “California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric Company — and What It Means for America’s Power Grid.” The author, Wall Street Journal energy reporter Katherine Blunt, serves up chapter and verse on how PG&E came to be blamed for a host of bad outcomes, including catastrophic fires, a devastating natural gas explosion, two bankruptcies and the ongoing threat of rolling blackouts. (She even details a 1911 Railroad Commission hearing in Santa Rosa in which PG&E and the former Great Western Power Co. were competing for the same North Bay customers.)

In reviewing the book, the Los Angeles Times declared: “Blunt’s book is not a technical tome but a drama, a human tragedy, loaded with fascinating characters and tales of death and destruction, incompetence and chicanery, malfeasance and greed.”

Along the way, we learn how government works (and doesn’t work) on behalf of its citizens.

“A series of executives had sought to please investors and politicians, often at the expense of customers,” Blunt writes, “By the time the company confronted the risks of an aging electric grid, the problems were staggering.”

The 2018 Camp Fire, the most devastating wildfire in state history, began with a spark from a single, worn hook attached to an aging transmission tower. Eighty-four people died.

From Blunt’s book we learn that the tower was installed by the old Great Western Power Co. before it merged with PG&E in 1930. FBI investigators found that the hook that failed was purchased in 1919 from a company in Ohio.

After conducting his own investigation, the Butte County district attorney would say: “In 1930, PG&E blindly bought a used car. PG&E drove that car until it fell apart.”

Blunt reminds us, too, that PG&E wasn’t alone to blame. Politicians, regulators, investors who valued short-term profits over long-term stability, companies eager to manipulate energy markets, a deregulation plan that wasn’t what it was cracked up to be — all made contributions to the series of debacles that left state residents to wonder what will happen the next time the electric grid is under stress.

And, of course, other issues come into the conversation: Should we be building so many homes in areas prone to fire? Do we need to pursue more ambitious programs of forest management?

Most of all, how should we respond to the increased risk brought on by climate change?

It’s forgotten now, but PG&E once was a respected company, a regulated utility that managed to maintain a positive presence in most every community in Northern and Central California.

But then came investors’ pressure to cut costs, deregulation, the gaming of energy markets by third party suppliers, bankruptcy, a gas explosion in San Bruno, catastrophic fires and a second bankruptcy. And so here we are, stuck with a troubled utility and an electric grid that may not be up to the job.

PG&E executives insist the company’s culture is changing, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “Every day we are keeping our focus on safety, and it’s at the forefront of all of our actions,” the company’s chief operating officer told the state Public Utilities Commission. “We know we have a lot of work to do.”

California is not alone, of course. In Texas, which likes to boast of its business-friendly schemes, people died last year when cold weather and a poorly maintained distribution system forced utility companies to impose blackouts on 4 million people. Folks suffered hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, failed water systems, polluted drinking water and hospitals in crisis.

In California, Texas and elsewhere, it may be popular in the short term to reduce utility bills, but the time will come when there will be a price to be paid for investments not made. Old equipment is old equipment. That worn hook in the Feather River Canyon, the one blamed for the Camp Fire, was manufactured 103 years ago.

It’s worth mentioning that the energy crisis becomes not just an object lesson about PG&E, but an object lesson for any state or community that fails to maintain roads, highways, bridges, waterworks and other investments in the future.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.

You can send letters to the editor to letters@pressdemocrat.com.