Tag Archives: CPUC

Demanding the state PUC get a friendly judge: a best practice for utilities?

300x225 Title page, in A Best Practices Leadership Forum for Small Utilities, by Carol A. Brown, Chief of Staff to President Michael R. Peevey, 2 April 2013 A utility didn’t stop at blowing up a Calfornia neighborhood, it also demanded the Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) get a favorable judge for that 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipe explosion. The CPUC president’s chief of staff just last year wrote slides praising his Legacy as Best Practices. Does that legacy include suborning justice? He’s still there, although she was fired, and three PG&E executives “ended their employment”. How many other PG&E and other utility executives and CPUC and other state regulators follow those same Best Practices?

Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press, 15 September 2014, PG&E Officials Removed for Improper Communications,

Four senior officials with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and the state commission regulating it were removed or resigned over emails released Monday showing the utility and state regulators appeared to negotiate which judge would be assigned to hear one of the utility’s rate cases.

The emails show the commission ultimately assigned to the case a judge for whom PG&E had expressed a preference, rather than another judge who PG&E said “has a history of being very hard on us.”

Also Monday, California Public Utilities Commission president Michael Peevey, who was included Continue reading →

No San Onofre nuke startup decision until June at least –NRC Chair

Two more victories for anti-nuke activists: San Onofre restart decision pushed back at least until June, and webcasts of California Public Utilities Commission hearings going on right now.

Abby Sewell reported for the L.A. Times yesterday, Decision on San Onofre pushed back to June at the earliest,

The plant’s operator Southern California Edison had hoped at one point to have one of the plant’s two units operating by summer, but NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane made it clear that will not happen.

Macfarlane told reporters Tuesday after a speech, “You know, the process is very complicated now. Almost every day it gets a little more complicated…. Right now I can tell you a decision on restart won’t happen until the end of June, certainly after the middle of June.

“It may get pushed back later,” she said. “I don’t know.”

She didn’t say much about the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) decision to require NRC public hearings before any decision on restarting San Onofre, but she did say this:

Continue reading →