A renewable energy advocacy group is calling out the state's Public Regulation Commission (PRC), urging that 80% of the board should recuse themselves when deliberating energy matters.
‘Wind, solar and gas provide energy that is much cheaper and just as reliable as coal and nuclear, which will kill us,’ says Mariel Nanasi, executive director of the New Energy Economy.
Particularly galling, she says, is how the majority of the PUC appears to support the Public Service Co. of New Mexico (PNM), which recently filed a rate case with the PUC seeking a 14% increase in electric rates. Such actions, she claims, signify that the PUC does not have the public interests at heart. Therefore, the majority of the five-member board should not hear the PNM rate case.
‘But, we aren't going to have a chance to prove this to the PRC because four members of the PRC have already decided to go along with PNM's catastrophic choice of coal and nuclear for new power resources, simply because that's what PNM wants. The hearing will be meaningless,’ Nanasi says. ‘Our system for regulating PNM has to change.’
According to its website, New Energy Economy was founded to build a carbon-free energy future. New Energy Economy employs public education, community organizing, targeted litigation methods and model solar energy projects to shift our energy economy from fossil-fuel and nuclear extraction to clean alternatives in pursuit of environmental justice and human and environmental health.
