POLICY
A proposal that would have affected the progress of deregulation of the power market in California was defeated during the recent US Congressional elections. Opponents of the measure, called Proposition 9, took 73.5 per cent of votes while those in favour polled 26.5 per cent, Reuters reports.
Proposition 9, which was supported by consumers groups, intended to overturn parts of the state’s 1996 electricity regulation legislation to prevent utilities recovering the costs of nuclear power plants. It would have prevented the state’s three major utilities from passing on to customers the cost of repaying around $6 billion in bonds and it would have cut retail electricity bills by an estimated 20 per cent.