Californians to pay $600 mln for green think tank

By Bernie Woodall

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California electricity and natural gas customers will be charged $600 million over the next 10 years to fund a green think tank, the California Public Utilities Commission unanimously voted on Thursday.

A surcharge to monthly power and gas bills will fund the California Institute for Climate Solutions, linked to the University of California. The surcharge will be tacked on customer bills of investor-owned utilities and not of municipal utilities in Los Angeles and Sacramento.

While the measure was approved 5-0, three Cal PUC commissioners voiced lukewarm support, and one, Commissioner John Bohn, said it pushed the bounds of power of the state utility regulator.

"We are, in short, telling the ratepayers that as a condition of receiving essential utility services, delivered by monopoly enterprises under our jurisdiction, they are required to pay for research and commercialization of technologies that may never deliver results," Bohn said.

He later voted in favor, saying the Cal PUC will monitor spending of the institute.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement that the institute will "bring together the state's preeminent colleges, universities, and laboratories to fight climate change."

It was Schwarzenegger who in 2006 signed a law that requires California to reduce climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020.

Cal PUC President Michael R. Peevey said funding research in technologies will help ratepayers by finding cost-effective solutions to global warming.