Book Review of 'California Goes Green'

Deck: 

Michael Peevey’s History Considered

Fortnightly Magazine - January 2018
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Michael Peevey offers his book, co-authored with a former colleague, as an antidote to the Trump administration’s energy policies. It says that California’s “progressive environmental and energy policies can benefit an entire nation, while a return to the past, as President Trump is advocating, can have dire consequences.”

He says that the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC), is “often controversial and frequently in the news, has tried to be cutting edge, a proponent of direct and lasting change in the energy-environmental area. Nationally, it is the pacesetter.”

Indeed, just to mention one example, the PUC’s Standard Practice Manual for evaluating demand-side management programs is being used around the world. 

Peevey spent twelve years at the PUC. Before being appointed to the commission, he ran his own energy retailing firm, New Energy Ventures, which was sold later to AES and then ultimately to Constellation, which is now part of Exelon. Prior to that, Peevey was the president of Southern California Edison.

He was appointed to the PUC in March 2002, in the wake of the 2000-01 energy crisis, which sent shock waves around the globe. The crisis stopped the national movement toward restructuring and retail choice in its tracks, a position from which it has yet to recover. In December 2002, he became the PUC’s president.

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