TURN Newsroom
Newsom Urged to Reject $1.4 Billion from BEAD Over Net Neutrality
Source: Broadband Breakfast | By Kate Keith
The Utility Reform Network (TURN), joined by telecommunications experts and consumer advocacy groups,said Oct. 21 that California should not accept $1.42 billion in federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding without removing Condition 50.
Consumer advocates say a federal grant requirement could limit California’s oversight of broadband providers. California consumer advocates are urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to reject a federal broadband funding condition they say could limit the state’s ability to enforce consumer protections for internet and phone service.
Safer, Cleaner Energy for California
Source: PIRG | By Jenn Engstrom
At the very least, the CPUC should reduce PG&E’s gas pipeline replacement spending proposal by 60% as suggested by The Utility Reform Network.
Utility companies should provide us with energy that is clean, safe, and reasonably priced. Yet instead of making it easier for customers to choose safer, cleaner energy, Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s biggest power company, is proposing to spend more than $3.8 billion on gas pipeline replacement over the next four years—the kind of infrastructure that, if we’re smart, California won’t need for much longer.
San Francisco Seeks to Acquire PG&E Grid Amid $13.9B Valuation Dispute
Source: KUCOIN |
The Utility Reform Network Executive Director Mark Toney expressed concern that remaining PG&E customers would absorb more grid maintenance costs, particularly wildfire expenses. PG&E distributes wildfire costs, including underground power lines, across the utility's entire customer base regardless of where the work occurs.
San Francisco wants to acquire Pacific Gas & Electric's electricity grid within the city and supply residents directly. PG&E provided the utility's first valuation on Tuesday, seven years after San Francisco initially offered to buy the grid. PG&E valued the assets at $13.9 billion, roughly quadruple the city's $3.4 billion estimate from April. PG&E says San Francisco should pay an additional $8.6 billion for separating the grid and preventing rate increases for customers outside the city. Those estimates would put the total expense of establishing public power above San Francisco's entire annual budget.
San Francisco’s Public Power Play
Source: Politico | By Noah Baustin
“What I worry about is that the cost of maintaining the grid, particularly the wildfire costs, will be spread to the remaining customers [of PG&E],” said Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, a ratepayer advocacy group. That’s why Toney wants the CPUC, while it’s developing its estimate for San Francisco, to avoid any potential shift of costs onto remaining customers.
San Francisco wants to take control of Pacific Gas & Electric’s power grid in the city. The utility says that’ll cost residents an arm and a leg, and maybe their whole pocketbook too. Seven years after San Francisco first made an offer to PG&E to purchase its electricity grid so it could provide power to residents itself, the utility on Tuesday, for the first time, put a price tag on its electricity equipment and property.
Consumer Advocate Mark Toney Keeps Sharp Eye on PG&E, Other Utilities
Source: Mercury News | By George Avalos
Mark Toney is on a mission to keep electric and gas bills down. That decades-long goal has made the consumer advocate one of PG&E’s toughest critics and that of its utility siblings. Since 2008, Toney has served as executive director of TURN,The Utility Reform Network. The post has put Toney in a unique position to challenge California’s biggest electric, gas and telephone companies.
Overall, customers are worse off since the bankruptcy. There are upsides and downsides. One upside was AB 1054, which ensured that ratepayers could not be charged for damage from the 2017 and 2018 wildfires. (PG&E caused fatal wildfires in 2017 that destroyed large sections of the California Wine Country and also caused a deadly fire in 2018 known as the Camp Fire in Butte County that destroyed the town of Paradise.)
Proposed Mega Data Center in Silicon Valley Raises Energy and Environmental Concerns
Source: Spectrum News | By Jamie Kennedy
The power needed for the center, sizeable to say the least, said assistant attorney at The Utility Reform Network, a utility watchdog organization, Elise Torres. “At 250 megawatts, it’s approximately the entire load of Marin County,” Torres said. “So that gives you a sense of the scale of just this one facility.”
The potential impact on electricity rates and who should pay for major grid upgrades are at the center of a California Public Utilities Commission review of an agreement between utility company PG&E and Google to connect a massive 250-megawatt data center in San Jose.
California Bets on Home Batteries to Rein In Power Bills and Lean Less on Gas Plants
Source: The Cool Down | By Leslie Satler
To consumer advocates, the change appears tied to mounting frustration over utility prices. Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, said, "I'd say we saw today a lot of evidence that Gov. Newsom has really prioritized affordability and accountability to an increased extent.”
California's soaring electricity bills have made affordability a driving force in energy policy. Gov. Gavin Newsom's latest move is a package of electricity-affordability bills built around home batteries and other smart devices that could help lower and reduce the need for gas-fired backup plants.
Power Giants Issue Urgent Warning to Californians As Scorching Heatwave Hits
Source: New York Post | By Maria Pena
“Community solar and storage is a way to increase clean energy generation, and so that would be an example, a very specific example, of something the state could do,” Toney said. A major factor during heat waves is solar power, which not only provides electricity during the day but helps charge batteries that can supply power later, Toney explained.
Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed AB 1813 on Sept. 30, legislation authored by Assemblymember Christopher Ward that would have created a customer renewable energy subscription program aimed at expanding access to community renewable energy projects. The Utility Reform Network supported the legislation.
Newsom Signs Legislation to Regulate Data Centers in California
Source: The Institute for Energy Research |
According to Mark Toney, Executive Director of the Utility Reform Network, a ratepayer advocacy group, “Collectively these measures protect ratepayers from subsidizing the significant energy consumption of data centers, ensuring that the data centers pay upfront for the extra infrastructure that must be built to operate them, and pay their fair share for wildfire mitigation and other ratepayer-funded programs.”
On September 21, Governor Gavin Newsom signed seven bills regulating the data center industry in California, imposing new requirements on electricity costs, water use, and local oversight. The legislation requires data centers to provide information on electricity use, water consumption, land use, and workforce needs, giving local communities more information to assess proposed projects.
NaLA and CTIA Warn That California Lifeline Update Risks Pushing Providers Out
Source: Communications Daily | By Philip Athey
However, the Utility Reform Network (TURN) urged the CPUC to reject NaLA’s proposal to allow providers to set prices because it “would essentially guarantee that the [specific support amount] would be locked at the highest amount the Commission allows, regardless of the competitiveness of providers’ offerings.”
Industry commenters said a proposed update to California Lifeline’s minimum-service standards and subsidy levels would pose logistical challenges for service providers that could push them out of the program if the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) adopts the plan without any changes.
Newsom Finally Says Yes to Virtual Power Plants
Source: Canary Media | By Jeff St. John
Newsom’s move drew praise from consumer advocates, clean energy trade groups, and environmental organizations. “I’d say we saw today a lot of evidence that Gov. Newsom has really prioritized affordability and accountability to an increased extent,” said Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, a ratepayer advocacy group that sponsored seven bills this legislative session, all of which were passed into law.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) defied political expectations on Wednesday and signed into law a slate of energy-affordability legislation aimed at containing the utility spending that is driving up electricity costs in the Golden State.
Industry and Consumer Advocates Largely Support CPUC Lifeline Update
Source: Communications Daily | By Philip Athey
The Utility Reform Network said the monitoring period in the proposal is too long and could subject California Lifeline customers to two years of price increases before a higher subsidy level is introduced. The group instead recommended an eight-month monitoring period with an updated subsidy level presented in 12 months.
Nearly all industry and public advocacy organizations said they support a proposed decision from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to increase the subsidy level and minimum service requirements for the state's Lifeline program, suggesting only minor changes and clarifications. But one, Assurance Wireless, said the changes in the proposal were so significant that they potentially overstep the CPUC’s legislative mandate and raise the question of federal preemption.
Gov. Newsom Has One Last Chance to Rein in Wildfire Costs On Our Electric Bills
Source: Capitol Weekly | By Opinion by Mark Toney, Executive Director of TURN
SB 905 would help ensure utilities don’t get overpaid for work that already benefits the company by requiring the California Public Utilities Commission to examine whether the profit margins utilities earn on wildfire-related spending — like undergrounding power lines — are justified. This work already protects utilities from costly wildfire lawsuits, and that protection shouldn’t come with an extra reward: outsized profit margins billed to customers who are struggling to keep the lights on.
Electricity bills have skyrocketed over the past few years for residential and business customers of Pacific Gas & Electric, SoCal Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — in large part because of the $40 billion customers have paid to cover California’s wildfire costs.
Should We Get Excited About California’s Latest Virtual Power Plant?
Source: Canary Media | By Jeff St. John
Google and PG&E have been tussling with the Sierra Club, The Utility Reform Network, and others over how to allocate the cost of connecting that 250-MW “large load” to the utility transmission grid. The big issue? How much of that cost should be borne by PG&E customers at large versus by Google itself.
California has yet to take full advantage of rooftop solar, backup batteries, and other home devices to create virtual power plants (VPPs) that can help its stressed-out grid — even though it has more of those distributed energy resources than any other state. Earlier this month, utility Pacific Gas & Electric launched its latest effort to improve on that poor record via an ambitious partnership with friendly neighborhood tech giant Google and pro-electrification nonprofit Rewiring America.
Gavin Newsom’s Big Data Center Play Has a Problem: His Past
Source: Politico | By Tyler Katzenberger, Chase Difeliciantonio, and Christine Mui
Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, a California-based nonprofit, told POLITICO he noticed ”more urgency” and “more positive signals from the governor’s office” to regulate data centers this year. He contrasted it to last year, when he said “there was not a sense that California had to be out front — and in fact, California was at risk of falling behind.”
What a difference a year makes. Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation that would have tracked data centers’ water use and signed a pared-back study measure on their electricity rates. Just a few months ago, he was downplaying the importance of the issue altogether.
National Leaders and Lawmakers Celebrate Governor Newsom’s Signature on the Most Comprehensive Data Center Laws in the Nation
Source: From the Office of Governor Gavin Newsom |
Mark Toney, Executive Director, TURN: “Collectively these measures protect ratepayers from subsidizing the significant energy consumption of data centers, ensuring that the data centers pay upfront for the extra infrastructure that must be built to operate them, and pay their fair share for wildfire mitigation and other ratepayer-funded programs. We are grateful for the Governor’s leadership to hold these data centers accountable.”
Yesterday, Governor Gavin Newsom signed the most comprehensive data center laws in the nation, providing communities more control on water, electricity, and land use.
California Won’t Cap AI Data Centers’ Water Use — Only Make Them Disclose It
Source: Martin CID Magazine | By Adrian Kessler
What emerged intact was a directive for the California Public Utilities Commission to study data center energy costs by 2027 — a study of a problem regulators already have the authority to investigate. An attorney for The Utility Reform Network called it toothless, and it is hard to read it any other way.
The state was supposed to be capping AI's appetite for power and water. What actually reached the governor's desk asks data centers to open their books — and even that is one veto from vanishing. The story California has been telling about itself this year is one of a state finally putting limits on the machines eating its power and water. The version that reached the governor is quieter and more revealing: it does not cap what a data center may draw.
Newsom Signs Bills to Regulate Data Center Industry, Criticizes Trump for Inaction
Source: The Los Angeles Times | By Blanca Begert, Dakota Smith, Ian James
“Collectively these measures protect ratepayers from subsidizing the significant energy consumption of data centers, ensuring that the data centers pay upfront for the extra infrastructure that must be built to operate them, and pay their fair share for wildfire mitigation and other ratepayer funded programs,” Mark Toney, executive director of the Utility Reform Network, a ratepayer advocacy group, said.
California just took its first concrete steps toward regulating its growing data center industry as public appetite builds to crack down on the massive facilities. Amid widespread concerns about environmental and economic impacts of data centers, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed seven bills Monday morning aimed at protecting consumers from growing electricity costs and tracking the centers’ immense energy and water consumption.
Consumer Advocates Call on California to Fight BEAD Restrictions
Source: Communications Daily | By Philip Athey
Ryan Johnston, a telecom regulatory attorney for TURN, said that beyond the Verizon/Frontier merger requirements, the condition could undermine California’s Lifeline program and possibly even its carrier of last resort (COLR) obligations and minimum service quality requirements for both phone and internet use. While the state would receive its $1.4 billion in deployment funding, “when you look across at something like the California Lifeline program, saving about 1.7 million people $20 a month for the next 14 years, that comes out to... almost $5 billion itself,” he said. “There is not an equal weight on both sides of the scale here.”
Consumer advocates in California are calling on state officials to fight a provision added to the BEAD program by the Trump administration that would require the state to stop enforcing its net neutrality law and consumer protections on BEAD subgrantees for 14 years.
FCC Weakens Price Transparency Rule for Broadband Providers
Source: Consumers’ Checkbook | By Herb Weisbaum
Ryan Johnston, a lawyer with The Telecom Regulatory Reform Network (TURN), a consumer advocacy group in California, called the original rule “a really good transparency tool” that was working as intended. “It’s pretty straightforward. We all know how to read food product labels,” Johnston said.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which has become far more business-friendly under the Trump administration, has ordered changes to its broadband label rule. The original rule, approved during the Biden administration, made it more difficult for companies to obscure the full prices of their services.