Public utility commissions (PUCs) wield enormous influence in the US energy transition — they regulate the monopolistic utilities at the heart of America's electricity system but face little public scrutiny. Now, energy analyst Charles Hua is launching PowerLines, a nonprofit that aims to pull PUCs into the spotlight. In this episode, we discuss the problems with PUCs, opportunities for reform, and the coalition the group aims to organize.
Text transcript:
David Roberts
Okay, all right. Hello everyone, this is Volts for September 11, 2024, "This new organization wants to remake PUCs for the energy transition." I'm your host, David Roberts. One of the most important institutions in the energy transition is, perversely, one of the least scrutinized and cross-pressured. I am speaking, of course, about the Public Utility Commission, or PUC.
As Volts listeners know, power utilities are monopolies — they have sole access to customers or distribution infrastructure in a particular service area. But they are not unrestrained, unregulated monopolies. To the contrary, each one is quite heavily regulated: in each of the 50 states, there is a PUC, the job of which is to tell utilities what they can and can't do with rates, programs, and investments.
PUCs have direct regulatory authority over the entities at the heart of the US electricity system, which is itself the heart of the US clean-energy future. That gives them immense power and significance. Yet, most of their work goes on in obscurity, with only utility lawyers and lobbyists paying attention.
Neither the public nor most clean energy advocates pay much attention to who is appointed or elected to PUCs; very few activists show up at PUC meetings; legislatures face very little pressure to write better rules for their PUCs. Charles Hua wants to change all that. An energy analyst who has worked at Rewiring America, DOE's Loan Programs Office, and now at the Berkeley Lab as a research affiliate, Hua has taken note of the centrality but obscurity of PUCs and decided to do something about it.
He is starting a nonprofit organization called PowerLines, meant to pull together a big tent coalition of people interested in PUC reform, everyone from PUC staffers themselves to state legislators, clean energy providers and customers, academics and researchers, and grassroots groups. He wants people paying attention and getting involved in this long-neglected area. The official mission statement: "PowerLines aims to modernize the utility regulatory system to accelerate affordable, reliable, and clean energy for American consumers." I could not be more supportive of this mission, and I could not be more honored that Hua has chosen to publicly unveil the effort on Volts.
I can't wait to talk to him about it. With no further ado, Charles Hua, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Charles Hua
David, thanks so much for having me. It's an honor.
David Roberts
I'm so geeked about this. I've been geeked about this for a long time, ever since we first talked about it. This is one of those ideas that I just feel like, you know, the time has come. I'm really excited to walk through it. So, you know, I said in the intro, PUCs, there's one in every state. Their job is to regulate utilities. Maybe let's just talk a little bit to begin with, for two or three minutes, just about what do they do? Kind of on a day-to-day basis. What does it mean that PUCs regulate utilities?
Charles Hua
Sure. So first, we're spending an hour talking about PUCs because they're the most important, least understood body in energy. I like to call them the guardians of the energy transition. So, what do they do? Well, they regulate all kinds of utilities: electricity, gas, telecoms, water, or in some cases, rail and transportation as well. They usually regulate the investor-owned utilities in the state, although sometimes they regulate the munis and rural electric co-ops. And broadly speaking, they're in charge of three really important things. One is how much people pay for energy; two is how much utilities invest in different forms of energy; and then third is where certain energy and transmission projects are located.
They can play other roles as well. They participate in regional transmission organizations. They coordinate with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and they implement federal and state policies like the Inflation Reduction Act and Renewable Portfolio Standards. So, they're really, really powerful. In fact, these 200 people oversee over $200 billion in annual utility spending. That's a billion dollars a person. Yet, few people know who their state's PUC commissioners are or what they do. And we should be talking about them like they're Supreme Court justices in terms of their impact on energy and equity issues.
David Roberts
It is a little crazy how much people in our world complain about utilities — and here I am, very much looking in the mirror — and how little they complain about PUCs. But as you say, like, utilities can't really do anything without PUC permission. Like almost nothing. They can't raise rates, they can't spend substantial amounts of money, they can't permit large projects. All of it goes through this regulatory body. And yet, as you say, it's bizarre: they almost never come up in conversation. Like, I bet not one person out of a thousand could tell you the name of a single person on their state's PUC.
Charles Hua
That's generous.
David Roberts
It is crazy. So, these are significant bodies. Let's talk just a little bit about why they are falling short. Why aren't they doing a better job? I mean, I think, we can agree, most people in our world who are aware of them have their complaints about them, feel like regulation is too lax, that they defer to utilities too easily, etc. So, maybe let's just run through some of the factors that make it difficult for PUCs to do their jobs well.
Charles Hua
Sure. And just to frame things, before we talk about why PUCs aren't able to fully meet the moment under the current system that we have, let me just start and explain the context behind the moment that we're in. So, we haven't had to think about electricity and utility regulation, in part because for a while our grid was functioning fine. You know, it wasn't perfect, but we didn't have to care that much about our energy bills in most instances. And in general, the grid was resilient. But things are changing really quickly.
David Roberts
Yeah, I mean, utilities, you should say, like 5-10 years ago, it was difficult to get people in our world to even pay attention to utilities. So, you know, we're making progress here, I guess.
Charles Hua
That's right. And there's, you know, a couple of reasons why utilities have become more salient. Not great reasons, but electricity rates are skyrocketing; they've grown 20% since the start of 2022. The grid is becoming increasingly fragile. There's a preponderance of extreme weather events like wildfires, hurricanes, winter storms, Uri, Eliot; they all point to that. And then there's this new trend, this growing electricity demand driven by AI and manufacturing, that's creating even more strains on an already challenged grid. So all these different stakeholders, they're not getting what they want, including the utilities who feel that consumer trust is at an all-time low.
Including the commercial and industrial customers with clean energy targets that aren't getting clean electricity fast enough, and certainly low-income communities that have always had to pay a disproportionate share of their income and their wealth on energy and continue to face shutoffs. So, we've been living under this illusion of stability, but in reality, we're coming close to reaching a breaking point if we don't pay attention and we don't act now.
David Roberts
Well, we should just add to all that, because I noticed you mentioned grid stress from weather, burgeoning demand from AI, etcetera. But also, P.S.: we're trying to transition the entire material basis of our electricity system underneath us without any loss of service, even as we meet these challenges.
Charles Hua
Well, that's certainly true.
David Roberts
Just to throw that in there, too.
Charles Hua
So, to get at your question, why are PUCs not structured in such a way to meet this current moment? Well, there are three reasons in particular that I point to regarding the underperforming state of utility regulation today. First is that the job is fundamentally very hard. It's important to add some nuance to the notion of what it means to be a regulator and just how hard the job is. You might need to review a rate case every year, an IP every two years — an integrated resource plan, I should say, every two years — maybe the state passed a new clean electricity law.
So, you now have to figure out how to align utility regulation with those objectives. You have to participate in several RTO meetings. You know, you have electric and gas utilities, and you have to manage the energy transition and electrification in an affordable way. There are thousands of pages of dockets to get through. You have to engage with FERC.
David Roberts
You have to figure out if utilities are being above board about all of this.
Charles Hua
Exactly.
David Roberts
Even though they have way more information than you do, you're sort of like scrabbling to put together a picture of what's going on with insufficient information.
Charles Hua
Exactly. And if you think about when you're doing a good job, nobody is really thanking you, and that the lights are turning on and rates are low, but when you're doing a bad job, when the lights go off, everybody's calling for your head. It's a hard job, and I think that's really important to acknowledge. But that leads into the second point and the second reason why PUCs are underperforming today. And that's because there's a human capital problem here where PUCs are understaffed, they're under-resourced, they're underappreciated, they're not prestigious. And that's not right, because we need to build a robust, talented, passionate pipeline of folks engaged in these issues.
Yet, what we're seeing right now on the ground is that there's a lot of turnover at commissions. Any given year, a quarter of the commissioners may be exiting. The average tenure of a PUC commissioner is roughly four to five years. So, by the time a PUC commissioner knows where the bathroom hallway is, they're gone. And they don't have that kind of public recognition or gratitude to lean on. So, how can we expect PUCs to take a step back, think systemically, and realize that we're not meeting this moment?
David Roberts
Yeah, it's not really — that's such a good point. It's not really a prestige job. It's not really something that, like a sort of ambitious young person, you know, whatever, coming out of a good school, wants to play in the energy transition, wants to do something good. On the merits, this is such a great place for that kind of person to be. They have their hands on all kinds of things, but there's no acknowledgement of that. There's no celebration of that. There's no sort of channel pushing people toward that. And you often see governors making appointments to these things. You can kind of see from their appointments that the governors also don't necessarily acknowledge how important their PUCs are.
They're often treated as ambassadorships or something like that. You know what I mean? Sort of like giving it to someone as a kind of an emeritus credential, but not necessarily someone who's good for the job. So, they're neglected not only by the public, but also, I think you're right, even by professionals in this field and even by the governments around them.
Charles Hua
Right. And that's a problem. You know, to your point, like, oftentimes these roles are the capstones for former legislators or governor staffers in their careers, and it's kind of an endpoint. And the incentives for those situations aren't aligned such that they're trying to be ambitious and bold in enacting new reforms and advancing policies. And that's a lead into the kind of the last point that I would call out in terms of why PUCs are underperforming. And that's that — and you alluded to this earlier — people are not paying attention to this stuff. You yourself have described utility regulation as a "force field of tedium."
It's a brilliant phrase. Nobody wants to pay attention to it because it's super unsexy. But that's exactly how the public interest gets lost in this whole mix, is when people don't pay attention, when there isn't the disinfectant of sunlight, and when legislators' constituents don't, you know, call up their legislators to let them know about these issues and the power that legislators have. The actors in this system don't feel a broader sense of accountability because people aren't paying attention. And so that's why raising awareness of the importance of PUCs is actually a key solution. It's not just raising awareness for raising awareness's sake.
It's actually raising awareness so that we can build our collective intelligence around what's at stake and the need for all of us to come together to be informed and to figure out the best path forward so that we can all confront the real trade-offs and balances that we need to make.
David Roberts
Yeah, I mean, you don't mention this maybe because you're trying to be nice, but there are some people who pay very close attention to what goes on at PUCs, namely the utilities whose profits are on the line. Right. And so —
Charles Hua
That's true.
David Roberts
because no one else is paying attention and only utilities are paying attention. Generally, utilities get what they want. I mean, I think it's a fair generalization to say that in general, utilities get what they want out of their PUCs. Another thing you didn't mention is that this job is often a waystation for people who are either coming from or going back to utilities.
So, there's a revolving door here too. And if you know that you're going to go back to a utility in a few years, obviously, you're pretty incentivized not to upset the utility.
Charles Hua
Yeah. And I think that's exactly why shining a spotlight and raising awareness around this matters and does have a material impact. Because not only does it combat the situations where there's an actual mal intention, which is to kind of engage in that revolving door, let's say, but also in cases where folks are trying their hardest to do a good job, to be proactive, they need to feel support.
David Roberts
Presumably, some of these 200 people are there for the right reasons and are public-spirited and want to do a good job. What would they say in their own defense? I guess, if you know, as we're criticizing PUCs, what would they say about why they're not able to do a better job?
Charles Hua
Well, I think it is these three things that I pointed to. It's that the job is really hard. There are structural constraints in terms of the resources that they have available, and the public isn't paying attention. Just to put a finer point on that, just how hard the talent recruitment and retention piece is, if you're a very well-meaning public service commissioner and there are, you know, a good number of them out there. If your staff or if your top advisor is being paid $60,000 a year and you have some of the most difficult work in this whole space — your role is just as critical to a well-functioning grid as the utilities, but there are these fundamental constraints that I want to acknowledge because I do firmly believe that the majority of public utility commissioners in this country, they are making a sacrifice to serve in that role. But we need to make sure that we still pay attention to them to make sure that they're empowered and also have a broader sense of accountability to the public interest when they're regulating the utilities.
David Roberts
Right. Right. Back to state capacity. A regular theme here on Volts. Before we get to some specifics, though, just as a general matter, like you, sent me this paper, co-authored by Alexandra Klass — I'm not sure how to say her last name — but part of the argument she's making is that PUCs aren't quite as constrained as they say they are. I wonder if you could just say a little bit about that argument. Like, are PUCs, are these commissioners more gun shy than they need to be by the letter of the law?
Charles Hua
I do think so, and there are a couple of reasons for that. To provide a little bit more historical context for listeners, I'm sure some of whom are already aware of the intimate history around why we set up PUCs. But in the 20th century, we determined that electric and gas utilities and these other utilities should be natural monopolies, because that was the most efficient way of building the infrastructure that we need. And so, in return, in exchange for that state-granted monopoly status, there was a need to create a really strong regulatory enforcement mechanism.
David Roberts
Right. It's worth saying the reason there was that need is that America had recent experience with unregulated monopolies in the form of railroads, and they sort of became legendarily corrupt and powerful. So, this was actually like this whole system we have of PUCs watching over utilities is kind of a reformist — it originated in reformist sort of thinking.
Charles Hua
Yes, that's right. It's birthed from this notion of advancing and protecting the consumer and public interest. So, the statutory and legal authority given to these PUCs was determined in that time where there were both state and federal efforts to define the duties and responsibilities of these PUCs to advance the public interest. And over the course of the 20th century, that really centered on three things: affordability, reliability, and safety. But as you and your listeners certainly know, we don't live in a paradigm of the 20th century anymore. We have all these other challenges, be it these extreme weather events, be it the need to decarbonize our electricity system and do it in a way that reduces energy burdens and advances environmental justice outcomes for the communities that have been left behind and underinvested in.
There are these pressures, but our regulatory system has not kept pace. In other words, we haven't taken that systematic approach of figuring out what are the additions to the legal authorities of these commissions that we need to have so that these PUCs are well equipped to regulate and make decisions in a modern paradigm.
David Roberts
So you think the original language about public interest is broad enough that there's room within it to add more, basically to add climate and justice and things like that?
Charles Hua
Exactly. And that is the argument that Professor Alex Klass and others have made, which is that there's still a big gap between what PUCs think they can do and what they can actually do. And so, we need to make sure that every PUC and every PUC commissioner is aware of that gap and knows what else they could be doing. There is a need for more bold, courageous, proactive leadership and forward-thinking to advance a lot of utility regulatory modernization measures that we're talking about. The way to combat that, and the way I think it's important to acknowledge the context behind why they're underperforming around the lack of prestige, the lack of resources, the lack of public awareness, is because if we have those pieces in place, then it becomes a lot more achievable for these commissions and commissioners to be doing exactly what they need to be doing to be playing offense and not calling balls and strikes.
David Roberts
Right, right. And I also think, I mean, maybe this is, like, we have to be careful talking about this because you don't want to, like, I don't want to condescend to PUC commissioners, who probably know a lot more about PUCs than I do, but I don't think we should assume that just because someone gets appointed to a PUC that they necessarily understand the history, establishing legal language, and the limits and all these kinds of things. So, just like educating the people on the PUCs about their range of motion, I feel like should be a piece of this, but...
Charles Hua
That's right. And talking about them like they're Supreme Court justices and emphasizing the power that they have, I think, is a good reminder because you're right. A lot of people aren't aware of the power that they wield.
David Roberts
Right. Right. Okay, so we'll get back to PowerLines, this new organization, in a little bit. But setting that aside for now, let's just talk about, like, if I'm a concerned citizen, say I'm, I don't know, a renewable energy developer or a big company, something, and I hear you about PUCs, and I say, "Okay, Charles, I get it. PUCs are super important. They need reform. Here I am, an interested party. How should I think about approaching PUCs? How can I focus on PUCs?" You have these three pillars to help kind of focus attention and efforts. Let's walk through those.
Charles Hua
Sure. So, you can call it the three P's, but it's three things that are really important to focus on.
David Roberts
Every cool area of policy needs its own three P's, I feel like.
Charles Hua
That's right. So, the three P's of utility regulation are people, policy, and process. So, let's break that down. What do each of these pieces mean? So, in terms of people, you know, you have these 200 PUC commissioners serving these seats, but it's not just the commissioners, of course. It's the governors that appoint them in the 40 states. It's the electorate that elects them in the ten states across the southeast and the southwest.
David Roberts
So, let me just clarify that 40 states' governors appoint PUC commissioners. In ten states, they are elected.
Charles Hua
Yes, and I should add a little bit of clarification. So, in two of those 40 states, it's technically the legislature that appoints them. That's South Carolina and Virginia, where the legislature appoints the PUC.
David Roberts
Huh. Okay. But in ten states, they're elected. So, I mean, if nothing else, voters in those states could clue in.
Charles Hua
That's absolutely right. And to that point, we need to pay more attention to these opportunities to appoint and elect commissioners that are really committed to advancing the public interest. So, I think we'll touch on that a little bit more. So, you have these 200 commissioners, and we need to figure out how to support them to do their job effectively and advance the right outcomes. So, providing the resources that they need, making sure that the public is engaged, making sure that the voices of residents and low-income ratepayers in particular are elevated and amplified in these processes.
But, we talked a little bit about this. It's also the staff. These are some of the most important jobs in the energy transition. And, I mean, think about it. Nobody goes to a job in government because it's well-paying. They do it because it's an opportunity for them to serve their country and to have a significant impact that's aligned with some mission. People work at the White House, Congress, and DOE, in part because it is prestigious. So, again, we need to make these roles more prestigious and talk about them. But, it is important that we have the best and brightest folks working in this space.
David Roberts
I'm guessing that the average governor, when he or she is contemplating an appointment to a PUC, is not hearing a lot from the public about it. They are not hearing from anyone, really, about what they want in that appointment.
Charles Hua
That's right. So, you know, I've made it a little bit of a personal duty anytime I'm fortunate enough to be in the presence of a governor to ask them, "Hey, how do you think about your PUC appointments?" I'm sure they get that question on the daily, but, you know, I think it's important that they hear from you, because if they don't, then it's sort of whoever the loudest voice, which typically is correlated with money and power, —
David Roberts
Yep.
Charles Hua
influences that pick. So, they do need to hear from you and know that your input actually matters.
David Roberts
Is there a success story you could share?
Charles Hua
There are.
David Roberts
In terms of this, like, does pressure work? Does this work?
Charles Hua
I think so. Absolutely. There aren't a whole lot of examples because I don't think that these sorts of efforts have been deployed to their fullest extent. But, you know, there are instances in Pennsylvania, to some degree, North Carolina, where a lot of groups got together and advocated for their respective governors to appoint folks that were really committed to advancing the public interest. Now, there are some constraints in those states. The legislatures weren't supportive, so there were threats to yank certain commissioners from the mix. But we need to deploy this strategy systematically. That's the key is that, again, these are Supreme Court justices.
We need to proactively understand how we can get the best folks, the best and brightest, and most committed to advancing the public interest, onto these commissions.
David Roberts
Right. So, that's the first pillar and the most straightforward and kind of obvious. Like, people are policy people is, especially in DC, especially in politics, like people are everything. So, just paying more attention to who gets appointed or who gets elected is obviously step one.
Charles Hua
That's right. So, the second pillar is policy. What does this mean? So, we need to pay attention to the policy frameworks that shape how all of this works. So, I talked a little bit about it earlier, which is this notion of the legal authority of PUCs and updating them. Who updates them, and who determines the utility regulatory system? Well, if you go back to that history, a key actor in all of this in setting up the utility regulatory system that we have today is state legislators and state legislatures. They oftentimes aren't aware of the power that they have over all of this. Because when you think utility regulation, you think of the utilities and you think of the regulators.
Nowhere in that statement are the legislators, but they actually create the rules of the game for what the regulators need to do and what the utilities can do.
David Roberts
One thing you often hear from PUC commissioners is, "Hey, I'm just a technocrat. I'm just here implementing what the legislature told me. Don't, you know, don't look at me, look at the legislature." Probably not totally fair, but it is true that the legislature should be in the mix here.
Charles Hua
Yes, and that's a portion of it. In other cases, you'll hear from a commissioner saying, "Well, we're afraid of getting sued if we're perceived to overstep our authority, or if the law doesn't say we can do this, or it's not in our job description," or "We're already stretched thin as a commission as it is, we can't attach all these other analyses around environmental justice or around resilience because we have to figure out how we can advance and identify the least cost portfolio of generation and distribution resources." There are these other things, but the key solution here is for state legislators and other policymakers to pass legislation that ultimately revises the authorities that the commissions have.
So, to give you a very specific example, now, the majority of Americans live in a state with a 100% clean energy target or standard. But not all of these states actually give their PUCs authority to embed decarbonization and equity in all of their decision-making.
David Roberts
Oh, interesting.
Charles Hua
That's an opportunity. So, you know, only about a dozen states have actually given their PUC that authority around decarbonization, and roughly half as many around environmental justice.
David Roberts
And that's just as simple as saying that in addition to reliability, cost, and safety, also consider decarbonization and justice. I mean, that's the revision?
Charles Hua
That's exactly right. And so, there are tweaks like that, simple tweaks, which are in some sense no-brainers for those states that have those targets. And in theory, you're not going to encounter opposition if you already have a policy in place that says that the state needs to go in that direction. So, for instance, not every state with a 100% clean electricity standard actually directs the PUC to implement that standard or make decisions aligned with the law. So, there are some instances where the PUC can make decisions that are actually misaligned with these states' broader goals.
David Roberts
Right. Because it's not necessarily true that decarbonization is going to be, in every two-year rate period, the lowest cost, right?
Charles Hua
Yes.
David Roberts
So, it could be that, like utilities trying to implement the law, run afoul of their PUCs.
Charles Hua
Yes, that's right. So, there are surgical tweaks to the legal authority that we really need to examine and make. And these state legislators really can and should regulate the regulators. And they need to hear from you. They need to hear from you to understand that they have that power and authority, and that they're not, you know, somehow passive bystanders to how this entire system works.
David Roberts
All right, and let's also shout out Colorado. Another good approach legislatures could take here is what they did in Colorado, which is to make it illegal for utilities to use ratepayer money to lobby legislatures, which seems so obvious to me, like it's a monopoly. Of course, it should not also be lobbying the legislature. It's crazy. And it certainly should not be using people's own money to lobby against their interests. Like, it's just insane. So, like, Colorado has made that illegal. And I think one or two other states?
Charles Hua
There have been a couple other states that have advanced that policy. That's right.
David Roberts
That seems like a no-brainer to me. In your papers, you cite Hawaii, which passed this sort of performance-based regulation. So, like one of the big problems. And surely, every Volts listener has heard me complain about this at least once by now. But right now, investor-owned utilities make money by spending money. They get a rate of return on investment, which just incentivizes investment regardless of its quality or its relationship to decarbonization. And it discourages anything that would economize or implement efficiencies or have them use less power or build less, which is like half the stuff we want to do now.
So, that's a terrible incentive structure, as I've said a million times. So, one alternative that some states are exploring is called PBR, or performance-based regulation, which just says some version of "Utilities should make money based on performance." Based on doing a good job. A crazy notion in the utility world. They should make money based on how well they do the job. And of course, you know, different states will have different metrics on how they define a good job. But my question, the whole preamble of that is, my question is, is that one of those things where PUCs feel like we have to be told by a legislature to do that if you want us to do that?
Or is that the kind of thing where a PUC could just do it on its own because it seems to serve the public interest best?
Charles Hua
I think that there's probably a really in-depth legal analysis across all 50 states that is necessary there. But I think in practice, though, usually it's the former, where it is a pretty radical departure from our current notion of regulation, which is known as "cost of service" regulation, as you point out. And I think there is an important nuance here where there's this notion that you need PBR to have the right incentives, but it's important to call out that all regulation is incentive regulation. And what does that mean? That means that under any framework that you use across that spectrum, from the traditional ways that we regulate utilities to the most innovative kind of performance-based ways, is that you are going to incentivize utilities to do x or y if you're the regulator, because they have to listen to you, as you point out.
David Roberts
You're creating some sort of incentive no matter what you do.
Charles Hua
Right. So, if you're the PUC and you tell the utilities, "Hey, you have to do xyz," you don't necessarily need to create a metric for them to do it. Now, in some states, PBR makes sense as a solution. It doesn't necessarily make sense across the board and could certainly devote a whole episode to diving into that.
David Roberts
Yes, I will someday.
Charles Hua
Reasonable people disagree on how effective that mechanism is, in part because it is such a big policy departure. The time scales are such that utilities are fine with changing the ways they're compensated in the medium and long term, perhaps because as long as they can make the same amount of money, that's fine. But the problem is to get there, to get to that ideal PBR end state, it's not necessarily going to be great for the financial performance of the utilities in the short term. So, there's going to be a lot of resistance to that policy.
So, I want to add a little bit of nuance to this notion that we can just suddenly get to performance-based regulation overnight, because it is really complex. And I think that's where having the attention to people, policy, and process that we talk about matters. Because if we have stakeholders with a vested interest in this specific policy engage, then that's going to be important.
David Roberts
You're teeing me right up here. It's just to make mention of the fact that I interviewed on the pod, Marissa Gillett, who is the head of the PUC in Connecticut, who is attempting to implement something like performance-based regulation and is getting all kinds of blowback from utilities. They're losing their minds trying to get her fired, lobbying the governor to get her out of there because she's trying to reform things. So this thing, I think, goes to illustrate everything we've said so far. A) It's important to have the right people right. Cause she's an ass kicker.
And if she wasn't, she would have been steamrolled by now. And two, policy matters. It matters that the governor is engaged and aware of the importance of this. It matters that these stories get some public exposure and that the public is at least somewhat aware of what's going on. Like all of that is playing out in Connecticut right now.
Charles Hua
That's right. So, just to close out the three pillars, the third is process. And this also really matters because public utility commissions have the word "public" in their name. We forget that sometimes, but it's crucial that the public shows up and is engaged. More public engagement is critical because it not only gives the regulators more information and context behind what communities and people are facing around high energy burdens and high energy bills or environmental injustice issues, but it also empowers them and actually gives them more authority to act in the public interest when there is demonstrable evidence that they can point to from the public in these decisions.
So, it's critical to have the public engaged, and it also makes sure that utilities can better understand how to proactively incorporate the public interest into their own decisions when they're attempting to do so. But right now, because there isn't a ton of public engagement relative to just how important these bodies are, we need to elevate that.
David Roberts
So, that's just as simple as, like, making it easier to attend meetings. What, I mean, what are some of the tangible things?
Charles Hua
Yeah, great question. So, FERC has a good model for this. They've created an Office of Public Participation that has really tried to demystify wholesale markets and all our favorite juicy energy regulatory stuff. But it's also things, and I know we're going to talk a little bit about this in a little bit, which is intervener compensation. So, providing advocates and community groups and ratepayer groups with the funding to be able to participate in PUC proceedings.
David Roberts
Yes, this is so important.
Charles Hua
And it's also things that you don't necessarily think about — but like having an accessible website that's not from, you know, the nineties.
David Roberts
Anyone involved in the utility world is absolutely sitting up in their chair right now.
Charles Hua
Absolutely.
David Roberts
We've all seen the nineties websites.
Charles Hua
Yes, but it's also things like the PUCs usually meet in the capitals of states, but if you're talking about big states, there's an opportunity for PUC commissioners and commissions to hold meetings elsewhere so that they actually do hear from the rest of the public. And it's things like not having meetings just on Tuesdays at 10:00 a.m., which really ensure that only the people who actually have day jobs working in utility regulation show up when we want a broader public engagement.
David Roberts
What about - I don't want to spend too much time on this, but what about the other side of the process agita, which is this notion these days that, like, everything takes too frigging long in the US and there's too much process everywhere you look, and that by adding more process to PUC proceedings, you're just going to do to PUCs what's been done to everyone else, which is make it very slow and impossible to really do anything. Do you, how do you think about that balance?
Charles Hua
It's a really good question. What I'm not picturing here, to be clear, is this notion that, you know, we have a bunch of people that are showing up and saying things that are not aligned with the public interest.
David Roberts
A bunch of old people, like, show up at the urban planning meetings.
Charles Hua
Well, look, people have opinions, and we do live in a society, and there are people with differing views. But what we're really talking about here is that just take something as simple as affordability and reliability. Like almost every state, including in recent memory, is struggling with one or two, if not both of those. And certainly, if you're talking about clean energy and environmental justice impacts. But these commissioners need to hear from you to understand that just approving a rate hike, even approving a portion of a rate hike, is not tenable for XYZ reason.
And you're right. The process can be very long to engage. Sometimes, you go through all this stuff with an integrated resource plan, only for the PUC to not actually formally approve or reject the IRP because they don't have the authority to do that. So, in some cases, we do need to take a strict look at where we can streamline some processes to make them better. And then, in other instances, it may be where we need to kind of expand our conception of what that process should look like. So, there is a balance. And with this whole effort around modernizing utility regulation, it's not so much more regulation or less regulation. It's smarter, better, and more effective regulation.
David Roberts
Okay, so those are the kind of the three pillars, the three ways to think about how to approach PUC reform. There's the people, there's the policy that governs these things, and then there's just the literal day-to-day nuts and bolts processes by which they make decisions and have meetings, et cetera. All of those are in need of reform. So, I want to talk a little bit about your policy ideas and policy focuses — foci?
Charles Hua
Foci.
David Roberts
But maybe before that, I'm just sort of curious, like, surely you're not the first to do this. You're not the first to pay attention to PUCs. Like, I feel like, I'm sure there are some portion of listeners who are out there tearing their hairs out, saying, "I've been beating my head against this wall for ten years. Welcome newbies." So maybe let's talk just a little bit about, like, what have we tried? What sort of other efforts are there that you've heard of along these lines, what have we tried and do we know anything about what works when people do pay attention and get engaged?
Charles Hua
Yeah, I think this is a really important question, and I do want to really underscore just how, I think, grateful as the public, we need to be about all the advocates that have really been in the trenches and engaged in PUC proceedings and dockets in the past, because certainly, ratepayer advocates, a lot of the time, they're doing the public's work. But again, the public may not even know that there's a ratepayer advocate or, you know, they don't even know that there's a PUC. So they don't know that there's a ratepayer advocate at the PUC. If I had to characterize the sort of modes of engagement in the past, it's largely been formal intervention in formal PUC proceedings around rate cases, integrated resource plans, and other key dockets.
David Roberts
Right. So, submitting comments via the official sort of comment submission process.
Charles Hua
Yes, that's right. And I think that that's been really effective. It certainly hasn't, I think, fully advanced the public interest. That's why we're having this conversation. But those efforts have been really important. And I think what we're suggesting is that we need to further our investment in those efforts and also take new approaches. But maybe let me just kind of explain a little bit what my sense in diagnosis is of why some of these efforts, why we haven't been able to crack this nut. And I think fundamentally I would point to maybe a couple of things. So first, I would say that we've been largely treating this as a technical issue and not as an issue around people's energy bills, their health, their comfort.
I would argue that this is the most personal part of energy, climate, and other issues: your energy bill. So, we've been leaving the public out, but I think that actually needs to change and we need to have more public engagement.
David Roberts
Well, and I think also, maybe like the people involved might have said, "Easy to say, but try five years ago to get the public interested in PUCs." You know, I think maybe the time is right now for the public to engage in a way that maybe has not been true until now.
Charles Hua
That's a really important point. And I think that part of why that is, is because we are in an inflationary environment where people are feeling the pinch on their pocketbooks, and people are caring more about electricity because it doesn't turn on automatically the way that it used to. That's not what it used to be. And so, I think people are paying more attention.
David Roberts
And also, now they're hearing about climate change, they're hearing about all these cool new technologies that they could get, new ways to manage their power and interacting with the grid and sending power back to the grid. I mean, all of this stuff is just cascading down on the public for the very first time.
Charles Hua
That's right. And people want choice, independence, and freedom. You know, that's really important is that you can figure out for yourself what kind of system you want. And then maybe what else I would point to is that I think we can further improve the focus of our investments here, whereas an institutional venue, we talk a lot about a lot of different things, load growth, IRA implementation, permitting reform. But if you really think about it as an institutional venue, I think PUCs are perhaps the most important venue to engage. And we need to direct more of the investment that's going in this broad ecosystem to these issues, because a lot of, again, a lot of groups are in some sense doing the Lord's work, operating with low budgets, low staff, including the consumer advocates.
Sometimes, there may be only one. Sometimes, the state might not have any consumer advocates. And so, we need to direct that investment.
David Roberts
And like many green groups, could just dial back on the blue sky "Here's my grand policy plan to decarbonize in ten years" and divert some of that energy, attention, time, and money to the block and tackle of doing stuff, doing actual stuff now, rather than big schemes.
Charles Hua
And blocking and tackling is an apt analogy here, because I do think that commissions are like the offensive linemen, where when things work, you don't know what they are and when they don't... But let me add a last point here in terms of why I think that the times have changed. There is a realignment of things happening and of new coalitions that are forming, and there is strong bipartisan and nonpartisan engagement and support around these issues. One example that I would really call out, that I think is important to call out, is in Louisiana, where that's a five-person commission and you have two commissioners representing different parties, Davante Lewis and Craig Greene, who have essentially worked together and come together to get energy efficiency rules advanced in the state for the first time in over a decade, nearly a decade and a half.
And they've been able to do that despite a lot of opposition and concern, in part because this stuff isn't fundamentally partisan. Energy efficiency is common sense.
David Roberts
We have sort of reached a point where, in many cases, utilities are just working for utilities now. You know what I mean? It's not like they have huge constituencies on their side anymore. A lot of them are just really kind of out for themselves. There's not, insofar as the public engages, it's pretty obvious that the public is on the other side.
Charles Hua
Yes, and just one other point that I would make on this is that the interests of all these different stakeholders are kind of coalescing in a way because of these affordability and reliability challenges and the increased strain on the grid. There's been obviously a lot of interest in things like virtual power plants, demand response, grid enhancing technologies. I kind of see them as sort of ibuprofen, where they don't solve all of our problems, but they do provide immediate relief that we can leverage to enable more fundamental reforms. And so, what I mean by that is obviously, and this is to your earlier point, utilities have an incentive to spend big, but that doesn't exist anymore when people really are hurting in terms of energy bills.
And, you can't just default to this old, you know, approach of just spending big. Of course, they're still doing that. But, we need to change the mindset of all the folks in the space because the more utilities invest and sort of default to their old school big investments, that crowds out the investments that are actually fundamentally necessary, including things like grid modernization and, you know, just building out new infrastructure and, you know, super sexy things like vegetation management.
David Roberts
Yeah, which is just to make a note, like vegetation management is a classic example here. That's an operational cost for the utilities. So, they do not get a rate of return on that. Right. They only get a rate of return on their big investments in infrastructure. So, all of these things that they could be doing to sort of maintain efficiency and maintain good performance, they don't get compensated for any of that. From their perspective, all of that is pure cost. Right. I read this history of PG&E in California and it's just over and over again.
They sort of like get religion. They're like, "This time we care, we really get it. We're not going to do it again." But just like over time, the incentive structure, you know, will win in the end. And like if you don't get compensated for one thing and you do get compensated for something else over time, you're going to stop doing the one thing and do the other thing.
Charles Hua
Yeah, look, bottom line is this: we, you know, we don't have the luxury to waste our resources on the expensive traditional stuff because of all these dynamics. We need to invest in these common sense, operational efficiency-improving solutions. And if we want a healthy system, we can't just eat that ice cream of building new, expensive plants. We need to take our ibuprofen, eat our veggies, and really invest. Yes, eat our carrots, all those things.
David Roberts
So, let's talk a little bit about policy. I mean, I know that you probably want to play your cards a little close to your vest about this kind of specific things that PowerLines might get involved in, specific policy battles or personnel battles or whatever else, but just maybe give us a sense of high-level principles like the kinds of policies that you want to get behind and push and the kind of reforms you have in mind.
Charles Hua
When we think about what a modernized utility regulatory system means, or looks like, I think it's three things: smarter planning, better incentives, and greater consumer protection. So, what does that really mean? On the first point, smarter planning, I would call out that we need to take a serious look at the way that we do integrated resource planning in this country.
David Roberts
And this is something that utilities do every what, like two years or five years? It's basically just like what do we have and what are we going to need in the next five years, basically?
Charles Hua
Yes, the horizons are usually 15 to 20 or 30 years, and they have to do it every two to three years. But, you know, it's important to call out that it differs by state. And actually, in almost half the states, there is no IRP process. And in that other, you know, 30 states that have IRPs or so, not all of them, again, actually require their PUCs to formally approve or deny the authority. So, you may see a scenario where a utility spends a ton of its time, its capacity, its resources to develop this plan only for the utility regulator to not actually be able to formally revise or approve or reject.
They "acknowledge" the IRP. That's sort of the term that we use. So, we need to change this process. There are many ways to do it, just to kind of paint a picture. Give the PUC authority to approve or reject the IRP and make sure that the utilities are first and foremost looking at how we can consider things like energy efficiency, demand response, virtual power plants, grid enhancing technologies —
David Roberts
Resilience.
Charles Hua
Resilience, exactly. It should also be aligned again with the commission's authority around decarbonization and equity. So, a utility has to look at the impacts of their plans on environmental justice communities.
And it should be aligned with other planning processes. Like states, now have all sorts of different planning processes, things like grid modernization plans or integrated distribution system plans. And these often aren't coordinated.
David Roberts
Even the transportation system is coming to overlap with the energy system in a lot of intriguing and interesting ways. Sooner or later, there's going to have to be some process that grapples with both of them at the same time.
Charles Hua
Yes, that's right. Just thinking about EVs and what that means for the grid. So, IRPs matter. And in fact, just over the next kind of two or so years, there's a ton of utilities with IRPs coming up. Georgia Power, Duke Dominion, Arizona Public Service, Entergy. There's a bunch of others. And RMI has a great tool that tracks these different IRP docket opportunities. But just those five, you know, utilities that I mentioned, they account for over 20,000 to 30,000 MW of proposed gas build out. That's the first. I'll kind of quickly touch on the others because we're certainly happy to talk with anybody who's interested in these topics further.
But in terms of better incentives, there are things that we can do to redesign rate structures where we can better incentivize electrification because right now, electricity rates are artificially high compared to gas rates in many states. The current rate system isn't dynamic or smart. It doesn't actually reflect the marginal cost of generating electricity because people pay flat rates that don't vary with the time of use. So, there's no real price signal in terms of the impacts on peak demand.
David Roberts
Geographic variation, too. We'd like to be moving to a world where prices are, in some sense, time and geography specific.
Charles Hua
Absolutely. And the last thing that I'll say on this is that there are incentive misalignment pieces in our rates, such that utilities receive cost recovery for all their operating expenses, as you pointed out earlier. That includes things like fuel costs, like natural gas costs, and in an era where there is a lot of price volatility and utilities can sort of just pass those along to ratepayers. That's not sustainable. There are these reports showing that volatile gas prices are actually one of the biggest contributors to the rise in electricity rates. And so, we need to be mindful of that.
The last thing is greater consumer protection. I think this is fairly intuitive, although in practice, we have a long way to go. There are things like looking at the shut-off policies of utilities and when a customer can be shut off.
David Roberts
Right. The PPPs, is that what they're called?
Charles Hua
Oh, you're talking about the PIPPs, the percentage payment?
David Roberts
No, no. In California, when they preemptively shut off your power because they're worried about fire damage, there's some acronym there.
Charles Hua
Yes.
David Roberts
And lots of people basically found out like, "Oh, I have an hour of power left and they're going to shut off my power." There was not a lot of, you know, there's not a lot of dialogue in the process.
Charles Hua
Yeah, so the policy that we would recommend here is intervener compensation, where only about a half dozen states have these programs, even though almost a dozen and a half have authorized these programs. And this is pretty straightforward. It's giving groups, particularly representing the public interest, funding to formally intervene in PUC proceedings to cover legal expenses.
David Roberts
Just in case people don't get the thrust of this, doing the research and the work to gather information, compile it, and make a strong, legally rigorous argument is just time and money intensive. It takes a lot of time and money to do that. Utilities have that time and money. Your average environmental justice group does not.
Charles Hua
Yeah, and to that point, whose time and money is the utility? It's the ratepayers', because they're using ratepayer funds to hire consultants and attorneys for the rate cases. So, it makes obvious sense that we should be giving those groups representing the public interest the similar opportunity to access funds to intervene. And some states, like California, that have robust programs, have actually found there to be a 14:1 return on investment for ratepayers with their program.
David Roberts
All right, so that's better planning, realigned incentives, better incentives, better ratepayer protections. You actually left off a number four that's on your PDF, which is one of my favorites, which is about accountability. Right. It's another process question, like, we need PUC commissioners to be more beholden to the public they serve.
Charles Hua
Yes, that's right.
David Roberts
And for there to be some restraints on the revolving door by which people go back and forth from PUCs to utilities to legislatures. Like, one of the first things Marissa Gillette did in Connecticut when she came in was just to say to PUC staff, "No, you can't just spontaneously go out to dinner with utility executives." No, of course, you can't do that. You have to, like, make a record of it. It has to be logged as a lobbying session. Just like fuzzy edge cases like that. Just like, you need to establish some distance, it seems like, between PUCs and utilities.
Charles Hua
Yes, that's right.
David Roberts
So, we've been through sort of like how to think about PUC reform. We've been through kind of your policy priorities, policy principles by which you'd like to see them reform. So, let's just talk a little bit about the group, the mechanics. What is PowerLines exactly, and what do you envision doing?
Charles Hua
The million-dollar question. So, PowerLines is a new nonprofit organization. As you said, our mission is to modernize the utility regulatory system to accelerate affordable, reliable, and clean energy for Americans. We started it because of this urgent need to modernize utility regulation right now. Our regulatory system is aging even faster than our infrastructure. At PowerLines, we're planning to serve as a hub to bring together important and credible stakeholders through that big tent coalition approach to share ideas and resources and to collectively work together on a path forward to better functioning PUCs. We're going to be doing really rigorous analysis to understand what's working in different states, to develop resources for different stakeholders to use, to increase the visibility and awareness of these issues to the broader public.
We're going to figure out what needs to happen, where, and how we get there.
David Roberts
For instance, if I wanted to know who my PUC people are and when they are appointed or when they are up for election again, you're going to have a database where people can figure out their own state situations.
Charles Hua
That's right. It's on our website. Across those three dimensions, people, policy, process that we talked about, we're planning on engaging in all three. For something like PUC elections, we've developed this data analysis to figure out what the down-ballot drop-off or what percentage of people are just not voting in these elections, even if they're voting, period. It's about 8%, it's almost one in ten Americans are voting for the president, but not their PUC commissioner in those states. So just raising awareness matters, especially when the margins can be really tight. On the policy front, what we're trying to do is we've identified a set of policies that we think every state should consider adopting, and we've mapped out which states have which of these policies, but there's more work that needs to be done to actually figure out what the pathway to actually get certain policies enacted looks like.
David Roberts
I mean, I bet there are state legislators listening to this as we speak, saying "This all sounds great. I'd love to do something. What is that?"
Charles Hua
Yeah, and to them, I'd say, "Reach out and we'd love to have a discussion on what specific policies that your state in particular can be proactively advancing." We've certainly mapped out some of that. But in terms of the last pillar, it's really supporting groups representing the public interest and intervening in these proceedings, or just providing public testimony and then figuring out what the resource gaps are and trying to fill them and supply tools and resources.
David Roberts
So, you can imagine, like supporting an intervener, you can imagine involving yourself in rate cases.
Charles Hua
Probably less the latter, more the former. You know, there are groups that are doing this work, as we pointed out. What's missing is a group that's sort of taking a step back, looking at this issue structurally and from a systems perspective, figuring out where are the gaps, what's missing here.
David Roberts
Right. I mean, I do think that, like, we've said over and over again that not enough people are engaged or aware of all this. But I think another problem is that even, like, there are a lot of people who are kind of vaguely aware that this whole thing is a problem. But I just don't think anybody knows what to do. I don't think anybody knows how to wrap their heads around it or how to approach it. So, just organizing the efforts of people who are already willing seems like a big piece of the puzzle here.
Charles Hua
Exactly. And so, I think you can picture PowerLines as playing this sort of role where we're figuring out what all the good ideas and actions and best practices are in different states and figuring out how we can spread them at scale.
David Roberts
Is this going to be the kind of thing where, like, I know, like companies can get involved, groups, intervener groups, environmental justice groups, renewable energy companies? What about just ordinary folk? Is this, would this, you know, if I'm just like an ordinary person who wants to do something about climate change, would you point me in this direction? And if so, like, what would I do to help you?
Charles Hua
There absolutely is space for more members of the public to engage, but we also want to be sophisticated about that. Where, you know, if, for instance, everybody has different motivations, if your motivation is climate, there's an important analysis of, you know, just how much that message sticks in a certain state versus others. And so, there are different messages, tools, and approaches that I think need to be tried. There's an opportunity to have a wider range of the spectrum of voices that have a material stake in these issues, to have their voices represented. I would say in particular, just on this point, the voices of low-income and environmental justice communities, I think, can be further amplified at these really wonky, arcane bodies, for sure.
David Roberts
And I'm guessing that ordinary people could also just donate to PowerLines if they want to. Are you going to be raising money from the public? Are you going to focus on big donors, or do you have a strategy for that yet? The fun part, raising money.
Charles Hua
I should clarify my previous statement and say that is the million-dollar question. You know, yes. The answer is yes. Like, you know, we certainly, if folks feel inclined to, we certainly welcome and are very grateful for any individuals that want to support PowerLines, either financially or otherwise, and also other funders, you know, particularly philanthropies and or other institutional funders. We certainly would love to have a conversation about why they matter and what we can do about them.
David Roberts
Yeah, and I'll just say, I mean, insofar as anybody gives a crap about what I say, just like, to me, this is like, this idea is so long coming. Like, I have been sort of wanting someone to do something like this for like a decade now. So this really seems to me like, I can't believe it. It doesn't already exist and I'm very glad it exists now. And left funders, I just hope they get a clue on this because this is one of those areas where just a little bit of money and effort and time, I think, could have such rich payback because as you say, there's virtually nothing going on here.
So, there's fruit lying on the ground right now because nobody's picking it up. So, to kind of wrap up, I'm curious, maybe I should have started with this, but I'm curious just by way of going out and, you know, I've been immersed in this stuff long enough now that I've long since lost touch with ordinary people who have lives and don't, you know, don't swim in this stuff. And I'm just curious, like, have you done or do you plan to do anything like big polls or surveys or like, you know, specifically like surveys of state legislators or even surveys of PUC commissioners themselves, just to get more information about what people know and don't know and want and don't want. Like, how good of a sense of the opinion landscape do you feel like you have?
I mean, you have been in the course of standing up this group and researching this group, you have been talking to a lot of people from a lot of different parts of our world. So, I'm just curious, like, what do people know? You know, how much of a blank slate are we starting with?
Charles Hua
Yeah, it's a great question. So, you know, and you're right. Through the course of starting this, I probably had conversations. We've probably had conversations with over 500 folks on these different things because it is really nuanced, it's complex, and it's not, there's no black and white narrative. Like, you know, PUCs are bad —
David Roberts
Evil oil companies.
Charles Hua
Yes, exactly. So, it's very nuanced. But maybe, let me just say, I think that's important. We do plan to do that. I think that the literacy around utilities is, anecdotally speaking, not so great. I think a lot of people probably aren't even aware of the fact that their utility company is an investor-owned utility with shareholders on Wall Street.
I don't think many people know that. So, we do plan to also embark on these kinds of listening tours and other ways to just understand how people are reacting to and thinking about these bodies. And let me just say this in terms of how I personally got motivated around this topic. It's not what I would have expected to be focused on utility regulation. Again, it's not inherently sexy, but my personal entry into this space was in — I actually first heard about public service commissions when I was 16, when we were trying to get solar panels on our school's roof.
And we faced opposition from both our school district, who didn't think that we were serious, we didn't have the funds, the roof needed to be replaced, as well as the utility, which didn't want a bunch of kids trying to connect a distributed energy resource onto the grid. And in the process of engaging with the community, we did, you know, get some feedback which is "don't trust the PUC." They're a rubber stamp. And that was my first exposure. I didn't know what that meant at all back then, but it certainly planted the seeds for my interest in this topic many years later when, you know, I was working with Jacqui Patterson on this analysis to look at the diversity of PUC commissioners and the impacts on all these issues that we're talking about.
And we found a pretty stark disparity. And I kept on coming back to this notion that people, not only do they not pay attention to these issues as much as I would like, or there's also low interest or prestige in this institution. Even among the informed folks, there's this sort of bearishness about the possibilities that lie ahead. And I think it's understandable because this is a really, really tough nut to crack. I do want to call out the fact that this isn't going to be an overnight process where tomorrow suddenly everything's going to work great.
That's not how it works, as you know.
David Roberts
A lot of these cozy relationships between PUCs and utilities have been developing for decades. You know what I mean? Like, these people's parents served together on these boards. These are cozy systems that go way back. So, like, cracking them open a little bit, I think, is going to be substantial work.
Charles Hua
That's right. And I think, again, it in part starts with us talking about it. So, I really appreciate you offering up your platform to be able to continuously engage on these topics and to raise our collective literacy and awareness around these issues. And it's again important because, in my view, there is no single institution or venue that matters more to whether as a society, as a country, we can deliver on an affordable, reliable, and clean energy transition over the next three to five years than PUCs and the decisions that they make over how all of this unfolds.
And whether your favorite issue is virtual power plants, load growth, permitting reform, or electrification, all of this intersects with the PUC and IRA implementation, transmission build-out, interconnection queues, and AI growth. And this notion of build, build, all of this is going to come down to the decisions that these PUCs make, and it's not going to be easy. But we can win, and we need to increase our awareness and investment in these issues because it'll take that for us to actually be able to deliver on these results.
David Roberts
And you don't even necessarily need to transform the thing overnight, just like marginal changes in any of this would be enormously helpful. Like, it is truly surreal. I mean, I know we've hit this point several times now by just by concluding by returning to it. It is bizarre that, like, we complain about, you know, electrification, how slow it is, we complain about natural gas, we complain about blackouts and shut-offs, like, we complain about utilities fighting this and that. Like, complain about all these things and like, there is literally an instrument of the public will already set up with its hands on all this stuff and we're just not using them, we're not paying attention to them.
It's truly, truly bizarre. So, I just would reiterate again, like, it's long overdue. Anyone interested in climate change, pollution, clean energy, economic competitiveness, international competitiveness, and jobs, name it, has got to engage in the fact that we have public bodies that regulate all that stuff that are mostly ignored and often corrupt, very often under-resourced and underappreciated. I just don't think it would take that much to pretty dramatically improve that situation.
Charles Hua
Well, we'll see.
David Roberts
I guess you're going to find out. Charles, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you for being the one person who saw this problem and actually decided to do something about it. Thanks for walking us through it. And I'll just reiterate again to the audience, like, love this, this is long overdue. If you perchance are sitting on top of a family fortune or something like that, this effort needs wings. So, pay attention.
Charles Hua
So, for the listeners interested in any of this work, we'd love to hear from you and connect. We're interested in engaging with a wide range of stakeholders, including PUC commissioners, state legislators, federal policymakers, community and public interest groups, companies, cities, towns, academic institutions, students, or anyone generally interested in these topics. You can find more information about PowerLines on our website, which is powerlines.org, or reach out to us at contact@powerlines.org.
David Roberts
All right, thanks again, Charles.
Charles Hua
Thanks so much, David. Really appreciate it.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes my guests and I sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or leaving a nice review, or telling a friend about Volts. Or all three. Thanks so much and I'll see you next time.
This new organization wants to remake PUCs for the energy transition