Consumers are already burdened with utility bills that have as much as doubled at a time when most incomes have barely risen. Utility proposals to as much as double infrastructure investment must be reconciled with the need for affordable utility service. Key strategies include efficiency and reduction of risk. Special consideration is needed for low-income consumers.

International Roundtable, December 13-14, will re-evaluate the regulatory state theories of the 1990s in light of the current state of the discipline. Issues include the role of scientific expertise and discourse, accountability in networked governance systems, and the prospects for democratization and public participation in regulatory processes. Papers will discuss the nature of the regulatory state of tomorrow and the direction research in this field should take.

Gasoline is way too expensive. We have enough natural gas for 100 years. Regulation just makes energy more expensive. Renewables can save us from dependence on foreign oil. Jerrold Oppenheim and Theo MacGregor debunk these and other myths and show the complications of energy policymaking.

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Jerrold Oppenheim and others discuss how states are meeting the demand for additional generation resources. Preceded by an analysis of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s generation market power policies.

Panel: How to Make Energy Affordable

Copies of Democracy And Regulation will be available.

Book signing at 1-4 pm, program at 7. In celebration of Upton Sinclair's 1923 arrest for reading the First Amendment to the US Constitution to Marine Transport Workers (IWW) strikers at Liberty Hill -- which ultimately led to the founding of the ACLU of Southern California. Jerrold Oppenheim will speak in person, Greg Palast on tape. Co-sponsored by The Harry Bridges Institute, The ILWU, Amalgamated Bank, Random Lengths News, The Whale & Ale Restaurant, The Living Newspaper Theatre, The Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed, KPFK-FM, the San Pedro Alternative Media Council, and the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.

Jerrold Oppenheim responds to retail competitors: Retail gas and electricity competiton - the perpetual transition.

The objective of electric utility policy should include reliable service and affordable, stable prices for residential customers. Retail (and even wholesale) competition has not accomplished this objective anyplace in the world. Instead, it has brought higher and more volatile rates, along with catastrophic failures in customer service, redlining, and sharp increases in low-income arrearages. In addition, the merchant generation business model has failed, which threatens reliability. Future policy directions for residential electric service should include portfolio management that requires least-cost resource choices consistent with a portfolio mix that achieves rate stability. There also needs to be a mechanism that assures there will be a builder of last resort to assure supply at a reasonable price.

Deregulation has not advanced efficiency or renewable initiatives and has had adverse consequences for consumers, including high and volatile prices, power shortages, and consumer frauds.

How regulation advances both efficiency and renewables and how citizens can participate in that public process.

A residential and low-income response to proposals to further restructure the electricity industry in ways that will hurt residential and low-income consumers.

Despite obvious environmental benefits to clean distributed generation, there are potential economic harms to low-income consumers.