Assuring Electricity Service for All Residential Customers after Electricity Industry Restructuring
✍ Scribed by Jerrold Oppenheim
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2002
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 738 KB
- Volume
- 15
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1040-6190
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Any value stemming from the shift to competition should not come at the expense of residential or lower-income consumers. Residential services must be offered for transition, short-term emergency, and long-term standard requirements, the latter at reasonable and standard rates. Jerrold Oppenheim Jerrold Oppenheim, Esq., is an independent consultant and attorney who has represented consumer interests for more than 30 years, specializing in cases involving public utilities. A graduate of Harvard College and Boston College Law School, he has held prominent positions in the Attorneys General offices in New York and Massachusetts. Earlier, he directed consumer and utility legal assistance programs in New York and Chicago and was founding Director of Renewable Energy Technology Analysis at Pace University Law School. Most recently, he directed the energy and telecommunications program at the National Consumer Law Center in Boston, working as attorney, analyst, policy advisor, and expert witness. Mr. Oppenheim successfully lobbied for nationleading protections for consumers and low-income families in the Massachusetts and Connecticut electricity restructuring statutes, including a $11 million fund for low-income efficiency programs (Massachusetts), approximately $30 million in increased availability of low-income discount rates (Massachusetts), limits on industrial discounts at the expense of consumers (Connecticut), and maintenance of utility consumer protections on all electricity suppliers. Mr. Oppenheim's advocacy also contributed to enactment by the Texas Legislature of the first statutory low-income electricity discount in the South, adoption by the Utah Public Service Commission of that state's first low-income electricity discount, and adoption by the New York Public Service Commission of that state's first broad-based low-income electricity discount.
Mr. Oppenheim led pioneering negotiations of conservation agreements with all electric utilities in Massachusetts. In the state's first case reviewing a utility conservation proposal, he persuaded the commission to require utilities to devote resources to residential conservation programs comparable to those devoted to programs for other customer classes.
This article has been greatly improved by comments from consumer consultant Barbara