In an election day promise, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California’s newly elected governor, movie actor and former body-builder, vowed Tuesday to try to use market-based approaches on the state’s ailing wholesale energy markets.

Following a recall election in which more than 55% of the voters rejected Gov. Gray Davis, Schwarzenegger unveiled a 16-step program, including a new law to accelerate rulings by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) on utility purchased power contracts and limit hindsight reviews (which sounds similar to a bill passed in 2002 — AB 57 — that is just being implemented this year).

Generally, the other steps would advocate competitive marketplaces, more new power plants, upgrading the transmission grid and closer coordination in energy planning with neighboring states. (Some of the steps are already being covered through a three-agency statewide “energy action plan” unveiled last spring.)

Critics immediately attacked his proposal as being a return to the state’s unsuccessful electric industry restructuring dating back to a 1996 state law.

Loretta Lynch, the former head of the CPUC and still one of its five Davis-appointed members, blasted Schwarzenegger’s energy proposals, calling them an already “failed policy” that would be “dangerous for our economy,” Reuters reported. She called the proposal a “retread” of the state’s 1996 electricity restructuring law (AB1890).

Although the candidate was not quoted directly, his campaign website Tuesday carried an item headed, “Solving California’s Energy Crisis,” detailing his strategy to “restore stability to our energy system and stimulate private investment in electric generation and transmission.”

The goal of the plan, Schwarzenegger’s website underscored, is to “make markets work.”

Meanwhile, it was business as usual in California’s energy agencies Wednesday and even, to a certain extent, in spurned Gov. Gray Davis’ Sacramento office where his cabinet set a meeting for Thursday to begin mapping transition plans with Schwarzenegger’s team.

Spokespeople for several major state energy agencies reported that they expected no immediate changes since most of their governor-appointed board members are protected with multi-year appointments that have already been confirmed by the state Senate. Gov. Davis’s chief press spokesperson, Steve Maviglio, said his boss was scheduled to work Wednesday afternoon in his Los Angeles office.

“He will be completing action on the approximately 250 pieces of legislation before him,” Maviglio said. “No media availability for bill signings is scheduled.” The governor’s spokesperson earlier in the day said the Davis cabinet was scheduled to meet (without the governor) Wednesday afternoon in Sacramento, but that meeting was later re-scheduled for Thursday.

A spokesperson at the five-member California Public Utilities Commission said all of the Davis-appointed regulators intend to serve out their staggered six-year terms. “Right now it is business-as-usual,” the spokesperson said.

Similarly, a spokesperson at the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), which operates under a five-member governor-appointed board to oversee operation of the private-sector grid system in the state, indicated that four of the five board members have been confirmed by the Senate, so they can serve out their terms if they wish. A fourth member and one of the confirmed directors both have terms that expire at the end of this year. They likely will be replaced by the new governor as part of his round of appointments.

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