BILL ANALYSIS
AB 162
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Date of Hearing: March 23, 2009
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON UTILITIES AND COMMERCE
Felipe Fuentes, Chair
AB 162 (Ruskin) - As Amended: March 16, 2009
SUBJECT : Disclosure of sources of electrical generation.
SUMMARY : Changes and consolidates certain reporting
requirements for publicly owned utilities (POUs).
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires every California retail seller to disclose its
electricity sources to end-use customers at least quarterly
and to the California Energy Commission (CEC) annually.
2)Exempts POUs from the statutory requirements of the renewable
portfolio standard (RPS) and instead requires that each
governing body of a POU to implement and enforce their own
renewable portfolio standard program.
3)Requires each POU to report the resource mix used to serve its
customers by fuel type to its customers and to the CEC on an
annual basis for the purposes of an RPS update.
4)Defines "net system power" (NSP) as the mix of electricity
fuel source types consumed in California that are not
disclosed as specific purchases.
5)Defines "specific purchases" as electricity transactions which
are traceable to particular generation sources.
THIS BILL:
1)Requires that every California retail seller disclose its
electricity sources to end-use customers annually.
2)Defines the term "unspecified sources of power" as electricity
that is not traceable to a specific generation source.
3)Provides that compliance with power source disclosure
reporting requirements by a POU constitutes compliance with
reporting requirements to the CEC for the renewables portfolio
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standard.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown.
COMMENTS : According to the author's office, the purpose of
this bill is to streamline the reporting process for POUs.
"Since 2005, public power utilities have been the target of a
proliferation of data reports required by the California Energy
Commission.? As new reporting requirements are added, they
often do not take into account previous data-disclosure
requirements and schedules, creating an unnecessarily
complicated, time-consuming and costly reporting
regime-especially for smaller utilities?"
1) Background: SB 1305 (Sher), Chapter 796, Statutes of 1997,
requires retail electricity suppliers to disclose information to
customers specifying the resources used to generate the
electricity they sell on a quarterly basis through what is known
as the "power content label." The original purpose of the power
content label was to provide customers with information
detailing the generation sources used by their energy service
provider as compared to an average of other providers'
generation sources.
In addition to the power content label, POUs have to comply with
a number of other reporting requirements to the CEC resulting
from a number of different programs. These programs include the
Renewables Portfolio Standard or SB 107 (Simitian), Chapter 464,
Statutes of 2006, the California Solar Initiative or SB 1
(Murray), Chapter 132, Statutes of 2006, and most recently the
Global Warming Solutions Act or AB 32 (N??ez), Chapter 488,
Statutes of 2006. These reporting requirements are done with
varying frequency.
2) What's on the power content label?: The power content label
has two columns: one lists the utility's resource mix and the
other lists the resource mix of "net system power." The left
column lists resources that the individual retail seller uses
and the percentage that each of those resources contributes
toward its portfolio. The right hand column shows Net System
Power (NSP). NSP is intended to create a comparison of what the
individual retail sellers procures against the "average" retail
sellers.
The power content label was originally intended to allow
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individuals to determine whether their retail sellers resource
mix comported with their own energy generation choices. Today it
also serves as a report card on how much renewable power the
POUs are purchasing since they are not subject to the more
specific RPS requirements the IOUs must meet.
3) Irrelevant Number: According to the CEC's 2007 Net System
Power Report the current makeup of the Power Content Label is
misleading to customers. At the time that AB 1305 was written it
was expected that NSP would make up such a high proportion of
total electricity sales that it would be a reasonable estimate
of other providers' generation sources. However, the NSP has
become such a small share of total purchases that it would not
be useful to a customer attempting to compare their electricity
service provider to others. This bill would instead require the
disclosure of California's total system electricity, the sum of
all in-state generation and net electricity, by fuel type for
comparison purposes.
4) Renewables Reporting: The information reported to the CEC
and consumers regarding the quantity and mix of renewable energy
for RPS compliance differ from the information disclosed for the
power source disclosure requirements. For example, the
definition of renewable resources for the RPS includes
restrictions on municipal solid waste, biomass and hydropower
that are not reflected in the power content labels. This creates
a potentially duplicative process for the POUs and could mislead
customers regarding their electric service provider's progress
toward their RPS target. AB 162 would streamline the process and
give more accurate information to the consumer by making the
renewable components of the power content label consistent with
the requirements of the renewable portfolio standard.
5) Net System Power Report: This bill would eliminate the use
of the NSP and therefore eliminates the need for the CEC's Net
System Power Report. Accordingly, this bill removes the
statutory requirement mandating this report.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
(AFSCME)
Northern California Power Agency (Sponsor)
AB 162
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Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA)
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Nina Kapoor / U. & C. / (916) 319-2083