Energy Policy: Cal Energy Crisis

Oops! Californians weren't given the real story about the state's energy crisis. There were no serious opponents to the failed 1996 move to give away the state's infrastructure to private companies. The enivironmental community was represented by the Energy Foundation and the National Resources Defense Council, which had spent the previous decade pushing for "win-win tactics" at the state level that killed California's grassroots energy infrastructure.

Not once have you heard anywhere but here, that the root cause of the 1996 deregulation fiasco was the 1988 Diablo Canyon Rate Case that allowed electric rates to jump 50%, giving the PG&E customers the highest electric rates in the country. That huge increase gave big users the impetus for calling for the draconian industry deregulation gambit.