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.
Here is the key paragraph from page 3 of SB 540 (Becker, 2025):
Line 32 (2) The governing board of the independent regional
line 33 organization maintains a public policy committee consisting of
line 34 members of the governing board of the independent regional
line 35 organization that engages with states, local power authorities, and
line 36 federal power marketing administrations about potential impacts
line 37 to state, local, or federal policies before it approves a tariff change
line 38 for filing at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
The proposed new RO Governing Board (a Delaware Corporation) includes representatives from other Western states such as Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado which favor coal-fired generation. CAISO is presently a single-state ISO with the members selected by the Governor of the state of California. California does not favor coal-fired generation. The proposed new Governing Board is subject to considerably more Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) control. FERC is part of President Trump's Department of Energy.
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.
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.
Here is the key paragraph from page 3 of SB 540 (Becker, 2025):
Line 32 (2) The governing board of the independent regional
line 33 organization maintains a public policy committee consisting of
line 34 members of the governing board of the independent regional
line 35 organization that engages with states, local power authorities, and
line 36 federal power marketing administrations about potential impacts
line 37 to state, local, or federal policies before it approves a tariff change
line 38 for filing at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
The proposed new RO Governing Board (a Delaware Corporation) includes representatives from other Western states such as Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado which favor coal-fired generation. CAISO is presently a single-state ISO with the members selected by the Governor of the state of California. California does not favor coal-fired generation. The proposed new Governing Board is subject to considerably more Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) control. FERC is part of President Trump's Department of Energy.
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.