The PG&E Power Grab

PG&E wants kill their clean energy competition for once and for all.

We need your help to stop them, so please take the time to read this important message!

PG&E is spending millions on a ballot initiative that would give them an energy monopoly enshrined in the California Constitution.

By killing honest competition from municipal utilities and community choice energy programs, PG&E will have a free hand to raise rates and hamper the adoption of clean energy produced here in California.

PG&E’s initiative (which can be read HERE) is nothing short of the largest ratepayer rip-off since the deregulation disaster.

PG&E is nowhere near reaching the state’s 20% renewable energy standard, currently procuring only about 12% of its electricity from renewable resources. Meanwhile, community choice programs are proposing to purchase as much as half of their energy or more from renewable sources.

As communities choose to get cheaper power from cleaner sources, PG&E stands to lose billions of dollars.

For example, the Marin Clean Energy program will take $94 million per year away from PG&E to fund local renewable and energy-efficiency projects.

Rather than moving away from expensive and dirty power, PG&E wrote their initiative to put the kabosh on letting communities provide competitively priced energy that is significantly cleaner than PG&E's.

This amendment to the California Constitution would eliminate existing law allowing a majority of voters to choose alternatives to PG&E.  Instead, it would require an extraordinarily high 2/3 vote of the people in order to expand municipal electric companies (like those in Alameda or Sacramento) or to create Community Choice Energy programs (like those being launched in Marin and San Francisco).

Rather than break its addiction to fossil fuels, PG&E is attempting to lock ratepayers into its already high rates as well as future rate increases.

The PG&E Power Grab, in short, will use money and political clout to jam through a ballot initiative that creates an undemocratic 2/3 vote barrier to local governments' efforts to provide renewable energy choices to their communities.

Were it not for PG&E's deep pockets and robust PR machine, such audacity would be laughable. But given the realities of corporate power and media obfuscation, a mass mobilization of voters will be required to beat back this fossilized monopoly protection scheme.

Consumer and environmental groups are mobilizing against the PG&E Powegrab, but we need your help.

Click here to give $25, $100, or more to defeat this initiative.

Every dollar you can spare should be able to counter $50 or $100 spent by PG&E.

Don’t let PG&E pull the plug on clean and affordable power!  Help today!