A little over a month ago I blogged on RedCounty about the coming spike in electricity prices ("Hang on for a spike in electricity costs made worse by poorly thought out energy and environmental policy.")  I predicted that we may soon see 20-30 percent increases in our electrical rates due to our overdependence on natural gas to power our grid.  Well, according to the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News PG&E just announced a 6.5 percent rate increase in two increments over the next seven months.  PG&E's residential rates rose 4.1 percent last January, meaning that by next January rates will have increased almost 11 percent since the beginning of this year.

Keeping in mind one of Yogi Berra's great truisms, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future," I'll go out on a limb and predict that this rate hike will be the first of many. 

As I wrote last month, "California needs to get serious about energy.  Failure to get energy policy right will cause California to hemorrhage good paying jobs while doing absolutely nothing for the environment.  Since California is the most electrically efficient state in the U.S. and the most environmentally advanced, it makes no sense for us to effectively ship jobs to coal-fired states back East, or, worst yet, to India or China.  In fact, the most environmentally intelligent thing to do would be to encourage an increase in California goods and services since our environmental impact per value of goods produced is low compared to dirty, coal-fired economies such as China." 

In other words, we need to build some modern nuclear power plants here in California. 

(For more on nuclear power, greenhouse gas emissions and imported fuel, see my paper in UC Berkeley's Ecology Law Currents, "Relative Risk: Global Warming and Imported Fossil Fuels vs. Nuclear Power" http://www.boalt.org/elq/C35.01_05_DeVore_2008.04.10.php).

Chuck DeVore
California State Assemblyman, 70th District
www.ChuckDeVore.com