California’s Power Struggle: Balancing Cost, Climate and Demand
October 15, 2025
ABC News
Andrew Campbell, Energy Institute Executive Director and James Bushnell, Energy Institute Faculty Affiliate, break down in ABC news how California is balancing clean energy goals with rising demand and high power costs.
“James Bushnell is an energy economist at the University of California in Davis. He said, as demand grew, utility companies expanded quickly…‘There’s a reason why the monopoly board has a square that says the electric company on it,’ Bushnell said. ‘Electricity is sort of always thought of as a monopoly.'”
“‘Laws were passed in the mid-1990s. There was sort of a desire at that time to try to reform the way the energy business was structured,’ Campbell said…’There were several large vertically integrated utilities. The same company owned all the power plants, they owned all the transmission lines, they owned all the distribution lines. There was sort of a desire to see if there’s a different way of doing things.’…According to Campbell, a major problem was the state legislature passed laws requiring buyers of electricity to buy all of their electricity on a real-time basis.”
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