Hi, folks.

Greetings from a former member of Californians for Renewable Energy, stranded for a while in snowy Maryland. Remebmer me? I had to leave the company of you fine activists in the summer of 2000. I still check in here once in a while. My wife returned to California last summer, and this summer I am following her back.

You may all be tired of energy politics, but they won't go away. Consider this: after getting bent over by deregulation and the dot-com collapse, the state of California is desperate for tax money. The big, polluting power companies want to keep Californians dependent on them.

There is a proposal before the California Public Utilities Commission to kill two birds with one stone: to place a 40% tax on small-timers who generate their own power, even home solar power producers. The reasoning is that people who generate their own power "unfairly shift costs to bundled utility customers". The costs in question are apparently the fees that the state has guaranteed to the big power companies, in those long-term contracts that were negotiated in the depths of the phony energy crisis.

Can you believe the gall of these people?

My family's experience with the Calpine/Metcalf situation convinced me that I needed to do something personally to stop the fossil-fuel juggernaut. Our political actions appear to have failed. Still, I feel compelled to do something. I have long thought about installing solar panels on the roof of my home. The California energy crisis made that idea seem even more important to me. Unfortunately, I was in graduate school at the time, and was not financially able to pursue the idea.

But soon, I will actually have the funds. I own a second home here in Maryland, which I will be selling before I return. I am flabbergasted that I am planning on spending tens of thousands of dollars on a solar power system, in part to help get California out of its mess, and they are considering taxing me for my public-minded efforts.

I can't believe that we are supposed to take seriously the idea that the price of the deregulation screw-up is a mandatory public cost, one that all citizens are obligated to bear even if they choose not to buy the goods. I don't want Calpine's electrons. I want to be my own power company, and generate clean, renewable energy. The environmental costs, health costs, and lost property values inflicted upon Santa Teresa by Calpine aren't being borne by Calpine, are they? No, the public is paying.

I encourage you to visit the following web sites and get involved.

Here's the CPUC recommendation:

http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUBLISHED/COMMENT_DECISION/23074.htm

Here are two opinion pages.

http://www.cooperativecommunityenergy.com/news/industry/Exit_fees.html

http://www.solarexpert.com/grid-tie/Action-Alert.html

Fight the power. Don't let them screw us again.

--
John J. Ladasky Jr., Ph.D.
Department of Biology
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore MD 21218
USA
Earth