Earlier this year, the Public Service Commission set in motion a five-year workplan for deregulating the production and sale of electricity. This process is designed to open up the state's electrical system to "retail wheeling," an arrangement allowing utilities to sell electricity to any retail customer they please, including ones outside Wisconsin.

At several public hearings held late last year, concerned businesses and homeowners turned out in impressive numbers to point out that radical deregulation and retail wheeling would shift costs from large industrial customers to smaller customers like themselves. Unmoved by the negative reception accorded retail wheeling, the PSC is readying to volunteer the citizens of Wisconsin as the guinea pigs in its grand experiment. Barring any delays or pre-emptive legislative action, the PSC is poised to introduce retail wheeling into Wisconsin sometime in 2000.

Thus, the institutional checks and balances that have provided Wisconsin's citizens with reliable, low-cost power for nearly a century are on their way to becoming a historical footnote. Indeed, the PSC's rapid timetable commits Wisconsin to becoming one of the very first states to return to the days when electric suppliers could pick and choose their customers regardless of location.

So why is the PSC in such a hurry to force such unpopular changes down the throats of its citizens?

Those who have been clamoring the loudest for retail wheeling, the state's largest electric utilities, would like nothing better than to sell low-cost Wisconsin power to large Illinois companies, which currently pay 40% more for their electricity than Wisconsin companies do. Today, Wisconsin's low electricity prices are a competitive advantage enjoyed by all of the state's businesses and citizens. Interstate retail wheeling would hand over that competitive advantage to the largest utilities, which could then pocket enormous profits from these transactions without returning a dime to Wisconsin ratepayers.

Under this arrangement, Wisconsin farmers, small businesses and homeowners would be forced to compete with manufacturers throughout the region for a limited supply of low-cost electricity. Can anyone really expect an unregulated utility to offer a corner grocery store in Beloit the same treatment as it would, say, the Chrysler assembly plant in Belvedere, Illinois?

Small wonder, then, that support for retail wheeling consists only of the largest electric utilities and their largest and most favored customers. Arrayed against these politically powerful interests is a broad-based coalition representing farmers, small businesses, small utilities, labor, senior citizens, environmental organizations and consumer groups. They have been joined by 19 county boards of supervisors and 45 municipalities across the state (see Groups Opposed to Retail Wheeling ).

Under deregulation, Wisconsin's air and water will come under increasing stress as utilities maximize output from their coal-burning plants to serve out-of-state customers. Because coal-fired emissions are exempt from the state's air-toxic regulations, power plants will contend with fewer environmental constraints than dairies. Is there anything wrong with that picture?

Environmentally conscious electric consumers will have fewer energy-saving or clean energy options available to them. The largest utilities have pulled the plug on virtually all of their energy efficiency programs in anticipation of deregulation. They are also backing away from their earlier plans to begin developing clean energy alternatives like wind, sawmill residues, switchgrass (a native perennial crop) and solar.

In contrast to the PSC's indifference to the clean, job-producing benefits from using more renewable resources, the Minnesota legislature recently required the state's largest utility to make substantial investments in wind and farm-grown energy production. Notwithstanding that utility's objections, state policymakers saw value in diversifying its rural economy by building a home-grown clean energy industry. Wisconsin should learn from Minnesota's example.

With a grant from the Energy Foundation, RENEW, Wisconsin's Environmental Decade and the Citizens' Utility Board have teamed up to enlist small businesses and consumer, environmental, health, and civic groups to form the Local Energy and Economic Development (LEED) coalition. United in the belief that Wisconsin's energy interests should come first, LEED Coalition participants are working to put the Green Plan, with its emphasis on maximizing energy efficiency and locally available renewable resources, at the forefront of the electric utility restructuring debate. Unlike the utilities' radical proposals, the program being advanced by the LEED Coalition is designed to deliver clean, low-cost energy to all classes of customers in every part of the state.

Having secured the Energy Foundation grant to promote our pro-active LEED initiative, RENEW, Wisconsin's Environmental Decade and the Citizens' Utility Board hired Sam Gieryn to organize a public education campaign to promote the use of clean, locally available energy resources. In the six months since working for the LEED coalition, Sam has delivered his slide show presentation to scores of groups around the state. If you know of a group or association who would like to hear more about the LEED initiative and why clean energy is such an important issue for them, please give Sam a call at (414) 964-6081.