It’s July! Each summer we welcome a close observer of California’s electricity scene, former CPUC president and long-time activist for progressive energy policy, Loretta Lynch. Her unfettered analysis of wholesale market dynamics, participants and actions always illuminates this mysterious work and educates us all. This month, she’ll focus again on the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) and its sway over elected officials, as it tries to keep from following California law and protecting us all as consumers.
An Alliance favorite, we invite Loretta every summer, as the frailties of the grid loom large. In 2022, she illuminated CAISO’s failures to implement market rules, thereby enabling unnecessarily high prices (see In the Trenches of the Transition: One Step Forward, How Many Steps Backward?). In 2021, she examined the 2020 rolling blackouts and how predatory “deregulated markets” were responsible. We always learn a lot from Loretta’s annual look at CAISO’s “summer shenanigans”.
Ms. Lynch served on the CPUC from 1999 through 2004, including through California’s Energy Crisis 2000 through 2002. She fought deregulation and PG&E’s first bankruptcy bailout, and has worked since in many venues for community-based renewable energy. Prior to government service, she was a partner at Keker & Van Nest in San Francisco.
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