Raissa Arielle Kasa Ngoma <[email protected]>
Item 17. SB 540 Support Letter - Vote Against
1 message
bekka <[email protected]> Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Reply-To: bekka <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
To the Clerk of the Board: Please share this email with the Ava Community Energy Board, their alternates, and Community Advisory members before 6:00 PM this evening.
Thank you,
Rebecca Franke
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Please DO NOT approve the resolution supporting California Senate bill 540.
As the Staff Report acknowledges, for California to relinquish control of the western energy market to a federal government that is aggressively pro-fossil fuel is a "very real concern." Implementation of SB 540 would increase the power of FERC and the western coal states to pull California backwards by reducing the state's authority to regulate and control its own electricity market. As a state, we are doing fine acting in our own best interest to phase out fossil fuels and increase the share of renewable energy and storage. If operating under a regional organization, why would a coal producing state not act in its own best interest, in the process undermining California's clean energy future? And why encumber California's success by diminishing our power and influence, especially in the current environment, when this state needs to stand out as an example in the absence of federal support? There are so many reasons to reject this dangerous bill - but of all the times to bring it up, why now under the Trump Administration, where the drive is in full force to weaken the administrative state - those structures on which this bill would rely for implementation?
We will have plenty of more pressing issues to confront over the next four years. Those years will also give us time to understand better the value of distributed energy resources and the necessity of increasing locally generated and distributed energy. Please don't support SB 540. Vote no on this resolution.