(Disclosure: Rose Law Group represents Green Mountain Energy.)
By Ryan Randazzo | Arizona Republic
A bill that would protect electric companies such as Arizona Public Service Co. and Salt River Project from competition is moving through Legislature. If it becomes law, the proposal would kill off a threat that has hung over the electric companies for more than 20 years.
Arizona utility customers don’t have a choice in who provides their electricity, though state law has allowed competition since 1998. Competition has just never arrived.
But in August, a subsidiary of New Jersey-based NRG Energy Inc. called Green Mountain Energy applied to compete for customers in the regions of the state served by APS and Tucson Electric Power. The Arizona Corporation Commission has yet to address the application.
House Bill 2101, which passed that chamber in February, and Senate Bill 1631, which is moving through the Senate, would repeal that 1998 law, and make Green Mountain’s application moot.
The utilities are lobbying for the law.
The primary purpose of these bills is simple: They are an attempt by the monopoly utilities to make sure that Arizonans can never ever choose who they buy their electricity from. As bonus to SRP, the monopoly attempted to hide the fact that it is deleting 7 sections of law that were being used to make sure it could be held responsible for antitrust violations as a result of how it imposed discriminatory rates and fees on the rooftop solar industry.
The coalition against these bills is unbelievably broad in the way it pairs libertarian and conservative think tanks like the Goldwater Institute and the Free Enterprise Club with environmental and renewable advocates like the Sierra Club and Vote Solar; these groups don’t agree on much, but they all agree these utility-drafted, anti-choice, and anti-renewables bills stink.
–Court Rich, Rose Law Group co-founder
