4 ms·

How do we get the ball rolling on nationalizing PG&E now?

toomuchtodo 4y ago
You turn it into a co-op. California can afford to based on what its residents are already burning in fiat on allowing PG&E to exist, and it's the world's fourth largest economy. Far smaller economies of entire countries have nationalized electrical grids (France is in the process of nationalizing EDF, for example, at a cost of $9.7B; to do so in California would be closer to $2.5B). Your expenses are then governed by stakeholders within the state of California instead of shareholders sucking profits out of a dysfunctional public utility. Taxpayers already subsidize PG&E, so that's not an excuse against nationalizing, they've already Crossed The Rubicon with regards to ongoing state support; any profits shareholders have/would receive are potential re-investments back into the infrastructure. Why are taxpayers subsidizing PG&E shareholders? Subsidize the infrastructure directly! https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/business/pge-bankruptcy-newsom.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/business/pge-bankruptcy-n... https://www.eastbaydsa.org/campaigns/pge/ https://www.eastbaydsa.org/campaigns/pge/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/wildfires-california-pge/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/wildfires-californ... https://calmatters.org/politics/2020/02/what-happens-if-california-takes-over-pge/ https://calmatters.org/politics/2020/02/what-happens-if-cali... https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1182562176667512833.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1182562176667512833.html https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/04/28/pge-revenue-profit-rise-utility-charge-more-monthly-bill-wildfire/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/04/28/pge-revenue-profit-ri...
quags 4y ago
Realistically pg&e being a publically traded company (like Twitter was) - California can use money from the budget and send a take over offer over 40 billion. The current market cap is around is 39 billion. They would need to bid a premium to get it approved by the current share holders. Boom it’s done and they can nationalize it.
robocat 4y ago
You look at other states or other countries where the regulations have been configured to work, and model on that. The most important part is the network infrastructure (power lines, transformers, substations) is a natural monopoly so it needs to be owned by the state. Regulation and incentives keep failing when corporate ownership of the network infrastructure is tried. In New Zealand the national grid https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpower_New_Zealand https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpower_New_Zealand is a “state owned enterprise”, while local low voltage networks and power metering is owned by each local government. The idea is to use corporate (profit motivated) ownership for generators and retail metered billing to end consumers, but design the market to be competitive for multiple generation companies (don’t allow one generator to have a monopoly in any area) and for consumer choice of who bills them. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_electricity_market https://wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_electricity_market has a good high-level overview of how everything is configured, and also refers to some of the failures of the regulations. It refers to a disputed study that consumers are overpaying by ~33%, so in theory bills could be reduced with nationalisation. . . although I personally would expect a government department to be more than 33% inefficient, so I don’t think electricity consumers win either way.

You turn it into a co-op. California can afford to based on what its residents are already burning in fiat on allowing PG&E to exist, and it's the world's fourth largest economy. Far smaller economies of entire countries have nationalized electrical grids (France is in the process of nationalizing EDF, for example, at a cost of $9.7B; to do so in California would be closer to $2.5B). Your expenses are then governed by stakeholders within the state of California instead of shareholders sucking profits out of a dysfunctional public utility. Taxpayers already subsidize PG&E, so that's not an excuse against nationalizing, they've already Crossed The Rubicon with regards to ongoing state support; any profits shareholders have/would receive are potential re-investments back into the infrastructure. Why are taxpayers subsidizing PG&E shareholders? Subsidize the infrastructure directly! https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/business/pge-bankruptcy-newsom.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/business/pge-bankruptcy-n... https://www.eastbaydsa.org/campaigns/pge/ https://www.eastbaydsa.org/campaigns/pge/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/wildfires-california-pge/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/wildfires-californ... https://calmatters.org/politics/2020/02/what-happens-if-california-takes-over-pge/ https://calmatters.org/politics/2020/02/what-happens-if-cali... https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1182562176667512833.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1182562176667512833.html https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/04/28/pge-revenue-profit-rise-utility-charge-more-monthly-bill-wildfire/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/04/28/pge-revenue-profit-ri...

quags 4y ago

Realistically pg&e being a publically traded company (like Twitter was) - California can use money from the budget and send a take over offer over 40 billion. The current market cap is around is 39 billion. They would need to bid a premium to get it approved by the current share holders. Boom it’s done and they can nationalize it.

robocat 4y ago

You look at other states or other countries where the regulations have been configured to work, and model on that. The most important part is the network infrastructure (power lines, transformers, substations) is a natural monopoly so it needs to be owned by the state. Regulation and incentives keep failing when corporate ownership of the network infrastructure is tried. In New Zealand the national grid https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpower_New_Zealand https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpower_New_Zealand is a “state owned enterprise”, while local low voltage networks and power metering is owned by each local government. The idea is to use corporate (profit motivated) ownership for generators and retail metered billing to end consumers, but design the market to be competitive for multiple generation companies (don’t allow one generator to have a monopoly in any area) and for consumer choice of who bills them. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_electricity_market https://wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_electricity_market has a good high-level overview of how everything is configured, and also refers to some of the failures of the regulations. It refers to a disputed study that consumers are overpaying by ~33%, so in theory bills could be reduced with nationalisation. . . although I personally would expect a government department to be more than 33% inefficient, so I don’t think electricity consumers win either way.