CGNP Opposes California SB 540 (Becker, 2025)
California would get even more coal-fired power from PacifiCorp
Here’’s the text of independent nonprofit Californians for Green Nuclear Power, Inc’s (CGNP’s) April 14, 2025 opposition letter to the California Senate Energy Utilities and Communication Committee:
PacifiCorp’s 2,441 MW coal-fired power plant near Point of Rocks, Wyoming. Photo courtesy of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 Creative Commons License
Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee
1021 O Street, Suite 3350
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: (916) 651-4107
April 14, 2025
RE: CGNP OPPOSES SB 540 at April 21, 2025 SEUC Hearing
An important 2016 unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision Hughes v. Talen Energy applies to California if SB 540 (Becker, 2025) is enacted. The key finding in that decision is federal preemption in wholesale energy policy when a multistate entity such as a RTO, ISO, or RO is involved. Thus, Maryland as part of the multistate PJM was forbidden from passing a policy that favored a particular generator, based on state policy. Maryland was likely induced to join PJM with claims that state energy policies would be preserved. Nope. The U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause preempts those state policies. As you know, President Trump's executive branch is pushing hard for federal control over California's policies.
California fought hard to have a single-state independent system operator after deregulation and the ENRON blackouts. Clearly, Warren Buffett's PacifiCorp would have considerably more clout regarding California electricity policy if SB 540 passes. That is why the firm has been aggressively lobbying for CAISO grid regionalization since 2016 at the state and federal level. Just between 2023-2024, PacifiCorp spent more than $18.5 million lobbying at the state level. The firm just added a new lobbying firm, Seaside Advocacy, LLC to assist their push for CAISO grid regionalization.
SB 540 (Becker, 2025) is the latest iteration of CAISO grid regionalization. Previous proposed CAISO grid regionalization legislation included AB 813 (Holden, 2017) and AB 538 (Holden, 2023.) The California legislature rejected those CAISO grid regionalization bills for the same reasons that apply to SB 540. The current version of SB 540 repeats the phrase, "independent regional" 25 times. This bill would be bad for the environment and for California ratepayers. Independent nonprofit Californians for Green Nuclear Power (CGNP) is one of the organizations opposing Warren Buffett's SB 540.
You can stand with CGNP in opposition to Warren Buffett’s latest attempt to grab power in California. California does not need even more pollution - laden power from Wyoming. Keep Diablo Canyon Power Plant running instead.
Here are additional details. This is a complex legal issue. As noted in CGNP's letter, Warren Buffett, via his PacifiCorp subsidiary has lobbied for CAISO grid regionalization at the state and federal level since the 2016 U.S. Supreme Court Decision, Hughes v Talen Energy, which is summarized in CGNP's letter. CGNP has objected at the state and federal level as we learned about Buffett's lobbying. Many of the articles at CGNP's GreenNUKE Substack https://greennuke.substack.com/ touch on these topics. The three attachments available on request cover the topic of increasing coal-fired imports into California which would have occurred if AB 813 (Holden, 2017) was enacted in 2018. As noted in the news article, AB 813 was rejected by the California legislature.
CGNP has included complaints against Buffett's firm in many CPUC filings since 2017. CGNP believes that PacifiCorp in its intense direct lobbying of the CPUC between 2019-2023 convinced the agency to completely ignore both statute and legal precedent in completely denying CGNP's Intervenor Compensation request for more than $153K on December 8, 2023. Since CGNP had to expend the funds in advance of filing their claim, the likely purpose of this lobbying was to bankrupt a critic of PacifiCorp's business practices. CGNP "tightened its belt" to remain a viable nonprofit.
PacifiCorp spent more directly lobbying the CPUC than the much larger Pacific Gas & Electric during the 2019-2023 period. As noted in the letter, PacifiCorp's main California business activity is the sale of its mostly coal-fired power to California at wholesale. PacifiCorp found a loophole worth about a billion dollars since November, 2014 of a key piece of California legislation SB 1368 (Perata, 2006,) which sets a performance standard for California power imports. Electricity import emissions must be less than a modern combined-cycle natural gas fired power plant. In 2010, PacifiCorp lobbied for a California-specific legal euphemism "Unspecified Power," which mostly applies to Wyoming coal-fired power. Furthermore, unspecified power is deemed to emit at the level of a modern combined-cycle power plant!
If enacted, the SB 540 bill language (available on request) would achieve the important goals of AB 813 (Holden, 2017) for PacifiCorp. However, it is much more opaque regarding these goals. The key observation is that the phrase "independent regional" occurs 25 times in the 6 pages of the legislation, including in the legislative counsel's digest. All of the objections to AB 813 regarding CAISO grid regionalization apply since the RO's new policy board, (CAISO's is now selected by the California Governor) would become an independent multistate board which would include direct or indirect PacifiCorp representation.
Please contact me at government [at] CGNP [dot] org with additional questions or to request the supporting documents.
CGNP suggests using the above text for an emailed message to Josh Becker opposing his SB 540. He is SEUC Chair. Please promptly email your message to josh.becker@sen.ca.gov This private email address is more effective than the one available from the California Senate website.