PG&E wants kill their clean energy competition for once and for all. PG&E is spending millions on a ballot initiative that would give them an energy monopoly enshrined in the California Constitution. Come to an organizing meeting to learn how you can plug into the counter campaign.

PG&E Wants To Stamp Out Competition

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 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.

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.

The Power Grab Aims To Pull The Plug on Green Power

This amendment to the California Constitution 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.

Stop the PG&E Power Grab

To find out how you can plug into the counter campaign, join us for the next meeting of the Local Clean Energy Alliance on January 14th, 2010 at 6p. The meeting features an organizing session by Eric Wooten, consultant to the Taxpayers to Stop the PG&E Power Grab PAC.

See http://www.localcleanenergy.org/meetings/20100114 for details.