April 16, 2025
From: Audrey Ichinose
People’s Clean Power Alliance
California Alliance for Community Energy (CACE)
To: Board of Directors, CAC members, Staff of Ava Community Energy
Re: Ava support for SB 540/Pathways grid regionalization When the Board deferred its vote last month, most directors felt that they didn’t know enough about the Pathways proposal.
So today let’s ask, what more have we learned about it. Here are two noteworthy pieces of information:
1. We know more about the 10 other states that CA would be yoked to in the proposed regional market. This
information has bearing on CA’s commitment to 100% clean energy.
Five of the states (Idaho, Montana, Arizona, Wyoming and Utah) have no commitment to clean energy and many do not even acknowledge climate change.
Indeed, some of these states are already extending the life of their coal-fired plants.
Let’s look at PacifiCorp, Berkshire Hathaway’s giant electric utility. It serves customers in six states through two
subsidiaries: Pacific Power (WA, OR, CA) and Rocky
Mountain Power (UT, ID, WYO). Though it provides
renewable energy like large hydro, it also provides much coal-fired power as well. It announced right after Trump’s inauguration that they were not retiring their coal-fired Utah power plants. Indeed, it looks like PacifiCorp plans to run them indefinitely, no doubt in anticipation of a Trump
subsidy.
2. We can now see the administrative power already lined up to deliver for Trump. This information concerns the
threat that SB 540 poses to CA’s energy independence.
FERC’s new Trump-appointed chair is Mark Christie, a
Republican who has already indicated that he will follow Trump’s order to submit FERC directives to the new energy czar, Doug Burgum. Burgum, former North Dakota governor and new Interior Secretary, has recently talked about
restarting shuttered coal plants.
With the administrative power thus all lined up behind Trump, and with CA yoked to many coal and oil producing states, CA’s clean energy goals wouldn’t stand a chance in the new regional market proposed by SB 540.
Ava Community Energy must vote NO on supporting this ill-conceived bill.