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Baker out at PUC

Public Utilities Commissioner Matt Baker is leaving the PUC to join the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a left-leaning non-profit, as “an officer in its Environment Program” foundation officials announced yesterday. Former Governor Bill Ritter appointed the environmental activist Baker in 2008, and his term had expired without current Governor John Hickenlooper acting to reappoint Baker to another term.

Baker was instrumental in steering the state’s “new energy economy” as both an activist and a PUC commissioner. In January the Energy Policy Center raised questions about Baker‘s ability to serve as an independent regulator:

Conventional wisdom in energy policy circles says that Governor John Hickenlooper will re-appoint current Public Utilities Commissioner Matt Baker to another four-year term on the PUC. His State Senate confirmation will be a mere formality, but it shouldn’t be.

Serious questions linger about his lack of honesty regarding energy costs and his ability to be an independent regulator.

Rather than regulate Colorado’s investor-owned utilities, the environmental activist-turned-regulator Baker is more interested in advancing his green energy agenda to the detriment of Colorado ratepayers. He and former PUC Chairman Ron Binz (whose own re-appointment was derailed with an ethics violation after which he withdrew his name for consideration) were instrumental in negotiating the language of HB 1365, a senseless fuel-switching bill and the “crown jewel” of Bill Ritter’s New Energy Economy that will cost ratepayers more than $1 billion.

This is blow to the environmental left and Xcel Energy because Baker provided them a seemingly credible voice to perpetuate the myth that Colorado’s 30 percent renewable energy mandate costs electricity ratepayers a mere two percent on their Xcel Energy bills. As we have demonstrated before and reiterated in January this is simply untrue, and Baker and Xcel both know it.

Baker’s love affair with renewable energy prevents him from being objective about Colorado energy policy and thus not honest with the people he is charged with serving – eroding consumer rights and driving up energy costs with regulatory sleight of hand.

In a recent op-ed in RenewablesBiz.com, Baker gushes over the advancement of his green agenda. He repeats one the biggest renewable falsehoods green activists have perpetuated on Colorado ratepayers: Colorado’s largest utility Xcel Energy can acquire 30 percent of its power from expensive renewable sources while keeping a cap on electric rates.

Most ratepayers believe that means that the renewable energy mandate – energy from sources such as wind and solar – will only cost them an additional two percent on their electric bill. “While Colorado’s largest utility, Xcel Energy, has exceeded its goals, it has stayed within the 2 percent cap set by the legislature,” says Baker.

It is true Xcel stayed within the two percent rate cap line item labeled the Renewable Electric Standard Adjustment (RESA) on customers’ electric bills. But it is not true that the RESA represents the real, total cost of renewable energy to Xcel ratepayers, and Bakers knows it.

We were also the first to expose that Baker and fellow commissioner Ron Binz spent a lot of time traveling, which led to ethics complaints being filed against both men. Binz left the PUC rather than seek a second term. In December the ethics commission found that Binz violated the state constitution by accepting a trip paid for by a company he was supposed to regulate. The same commission recently decided there was not “sufficient evidence” to prove that Baker’s trip to Seville, Spain, paid for a spanish government owned company, violated Colorado’s ethics law.

What remains to be seen is who Governor Hickenlooper will appoint to replace Baker. If the Governor’s first appointee, Chairman Josh Epel, is any indication of how he envisions the role of the PUC, ratepayers can expect more balanced treatment in the future.