Existing law vests the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) with regulatory authority over public utilities, including electrical corporations. Existing law authorizes the PUC to fix the rates and charges for every public utility and requires that those rates and charges be just and reasonable.

This bill would require the PUC to establish a special rate structure for large-scale energy users, who would be defined as customers of electrical corporations operating facilities with operational requirements of at least 75 megawatts of electricity, to protect other customers of electrical corporations, prevent cost shifts to those other customers, and require large-scale energy users to pay for the electrical corporations’ upfront costs of transmission or distribution infrastructure upgrades necessary for the provision of electrical service to those users. The bill would require the construction of those facilities to comply with certain labor requirements.

Existing law establishes the policy of the state that eligible renewable energy resources and zero-carbon resources supply 90% of all retail sales of electricity to California end-use customers by December 31, 2035, 95% by December 31, 2040, and 100% by December 31, 2045. Existing law requires the PUC, the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission, and the State Air Resources Board, in consultation with all California balancing authorities, to annually issue a joint report related to meeting that state policy.

This bill would require that the joint report also include the impacts of large-scale energy users on the state’s ability to achieve the above-described state policy.

Under existing law, a violation of an order, decision, rule, direction, demand, or requirement of the PUC is a crime.