Power play
Wasn’t California smart?
When the state de-regulated electricity, it
bought into the free market mantra that the private sector is better than
government at meeting public needs.
Despite the history of phone service after
the breakup of Ma Bell, California embraced the mantra anyway.
Now it’s reaping the benefits—rolling
blackouts through last summer’s heat and threats of the same this month
if it can’t buy enough power from a chillier-than-normal Northwest.
Some workers at a Kaiser aluminum smelter
in Washington are reaping the benefits, too. They just got pink slips for
a 10-month layoff. Under its contract with the Bonneville Power
Administration, Kaiser can sell any power it doesn’t use. The
revenue--$52 million in December alone—is more than it can make
manufacturing aluminum and paying the cost of laying off workers.
So much for a merry Christmas for their
families. So much for the magic of de-regulation.
The problems are so clear, even Idaho can
read the handwriting on the wall.
Idaho legislators scurried to Boise last
week for a special session and passed a bill to head off de-regulation.
Talk about a power breakfast.
Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne called the
session because he was convinced a federal appeals court ruling could
leave businesses and rate payers at the mercy of richer states and
industries in the fight for electricity.
Idaho is not the richest state in the
union, but its farms and industries have benefited from low power rates—the
result of a regulated industry and cheap hydro power.
Deregulation could change that. Farmers and
industrial workers were recently worried the effect on electrical costs of
releasing more water through dams to improve salmon survival. The threat
was nothing compared to ending up on the wrong side of the regional power
play.
The Legislature was nearly unanimous in
slamming closed a legal loophole opened by a recent federal appeals court
ruling. The House voted 70-0 and the Senate 30-2 on a bill that Kempthorne
signed immediately.
The haste was necessary. The court ruling
had left Idaho without regulatory authority over jurisdictional disputes
between electric utilities--essentially de-regulating the market.
As the realities of de-regulation set in,
Idaho should engage the rest of the nation in a long overdue discussion
about conservation. The state should try to refuel interest in development
of affordable solar energy systems to reduce demand on the power grid and
to avert the twin threats of high prices and scarcity.
