California’s state legislature this year is unlikely to produce any significant energy legislation because the state is still busy digesting major new laws passed since the 2000-2001 wholesale energy market crisis, according to the chairman of the lower house Assembly’s Utilities and Commerce Committee, Lloyd Levine.

More stability and refinement of the measures passed recently is needed, said Levine during an interview with NGI Wednesday.

In the last five or six years, Levine thinks there have been a number of “really significant” pieces of legislation on energy policy — “not tinkering at the margins, but significant policy.” Some of it has come directly from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and the rest from the legislature, he said.

Levine thinks all of the climate change, energy efficiency, renewable energy and resource acquisition laws are still being absorbed. “When you combine all of it together it is a pretty solid package,” the lawmaker said. “Part of what is needed is to let these things work; I don’t think we need action for the sake of action.”

He is satisfied that there now exists a “great platform” on which California’s energy policy can move forward. If adjustments are necessary, then legislation can be proposed as Levine has done in the energy efficiency area with his current bill (AB 811) dealing with local public financing for energy-saving programs.

“I don’t think we’re going to see any really significant energy policy come out of the legislature this year,” Levine. said. “I don’t see a need out there that needs to be addressed; others may disagree, but I don’t. We need to sit and let these policies take hold, such as let the solar initiative [calling for the development of 3,000 MW of rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems over the next 10 years] unfold and the energy companies work with the energy commission to implement energy efficiency on a wide scale.”

He is against injecting more “uncertainty and trauma” by changing the rules of the game. With that said, Levine does have one issue lingering since the energy crisis seven years ago that he intends to try to address smart metering. He thinks the nexus for the next policy shift in the state is going to center on time-of-use metering for small energy utility customers.

“People need to be able to pay the true cost of energy and base their decisions on their energy use on the cost of that energy at any given time,” he said. This means the state legislature would have to reform the limits of one of the prime crisis mitigation bills from 2001 (AB1X) that freezes retail power rates up to 130% of baseline.

AB1X also includes the freeze on new retail direct access or competitive choice, but Levine specifically said he has no intention of changing that. “The reopening the issue of retail competition injects the exact opposite of what I want to do; I want to inject stability. Going to direct access we would inject turmoil, and that is 100% counter of what we want.”

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