CUB Presents at NARUC and NASUCA 2016 Annual Meetings
Posted on December 14, 2016 by Bob Jenks
Tags, Energy
The national associations of utility regulators (NARUC) and consumer advocates (NASUCA) held their annual meetings on November 13th-16th in California. CUB regularly sends staff to these meetings. They are a great opportunity to learn about emerging issues, find out how other states are dealing with issues that are similar to Oregon, and network with other consumer advocates. This year was different in that Bob Jenks and Jaime McGovern were asked to present CUB’s perspective on the issues of electric vehicles (EVs) and utility pensions.
Jaime McGovern, CUB’s economist, made a presentation to NASUCA explaining how CUB took on Oregon utilities and defeated their request to earn a profit on their utility pension funds. Utilities around the country have been using the great recession and the 2008 Pension Protection Act to argue that they should be allowed to earn a return on utility pension contributions that show up on their balance sheets as “prepaid pension assets”. Jaime explained how she led CUB’s efforts to show that the prepaid pension asset was largely unrelated to the recession and the Pension Protection Act. She shared the worksheet she designed to track more than two decades worth of pension history for each utility. Finally, she explained how she used this pension history to demonstrate that utilities’ claims that the prepaid pension asset was funded by shareholders could not be supported. Undermining the utilities’ arguments was the key to getting Oregon regulators to deny the request of the utilities. This Commission decision was the lynchpin that allowed our victory in this case to save ratepayers millions of dollars each year.
That same week, Bob Jenks spoke to a large audience at the NARUC conference. Bob was asked to speak about the EV policies that were developed in SB 1547, Oregon’s Clean Energy and Coal Transition Act, the law that CUB helped write and pass earlier this year. Bob began by explaining that with carbon emissions from the transportation sector exceeding emissions from the electric sector, EVs are increasingly a priority for climate activists. EV policies are something every state needs to be prepared to address. SB 1547 provided six criteria for evaluating utility investments, including a requirement that the investments be prudently incurred. Bob’s presentation argued that the way to view utility investment in EVs is based on the benefits that EVs provide to the grid. Traditional utility policies allow utilities to make investments which facilitate load growth as long as revenue from that load growth exceeds the cost of serving that load. EVs can be analyzed in the same manner. In addition, Bob discussed the benefits that EVs could provide in supporting renewable generation. As the output of renewable resources varies up and down, utilities could increase or decrease the charging of EVs on their systems. Bob pointed out that as an EV owner himself, he does not care when his vehicle is charged—only that it is charged by 7:00am. Bob cited a study that demonstrated that if 13% of cars in the Pacific Northwest were EV’s, all the wind energy generated in the region could be integrated using the EVs.
The following day, Bob made a similar presentation to the NASUCA conference. To his fellow consumer advocates, Bob joked that it is only natural that we would turn to monopoly electric utilities for their expertise in transforming the competitive automobile industry. He cautioned his colleagues not to assume that utility proposals are good policy and to watchdog the utilities to ensure that investments to support EVs are well thought out and provide benefits to utility customers.
The presentations Bob and Jaime made to NASUCA are available here. You can also read Bob’s presentation to NARUC (beginning page 13).
Click the following links to learn more about NARUC (National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners) or NASUCA (National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates).
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03/15/17 | 0 Comments | CUB Presents at NARUC and NASUCA 2016 Annual Meetings