The California Independent System Operator Corporation (ISO) has issued a statewide Flex Alert, a call for voluntary electricity conservation from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday, June 20, and Wednesday, June 21.

Consumers are urged to conserve electricity especially during the late afternoon when air conditioners typically are at peak use. Consumers can help avoid power outages by turning off all unnecessary lights, using major appliances before 2 p.m. and after 9 p.m., and setting air conditioners to 78 degrees or higher.

During times of high temperatures, demand on the power grid can be strained, as air conditioner use increases. The forecast peak usage for Tuesday and Wednesday is expected to exceed 47,000 megawatts each day in California ISO’s service territory, which serves roughly 80 percent of electricity customers.

For more electricity conservation tips, visit the ISO’s Flex Alert website.

By the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board
June 2, 2017

By one important measure, California’s 30-year-old Beverage Container Recycling program has been a big success. Up until last year, more than 80% of qualifying plastic bottles, glass containers and aluminum cans were returned to recycling centers each year. Billions of bottles and cans that might have otherwise ended up in the state’s landfills have found new lives in recycled products.

Yet the program is in trouble because the state shortchanged the centers on their subsidies just as the price of scrap material was dropping. A quarter of the state’s recycling centers have closed in the last year and half, many of them in rural areas. And with fewer places to redeem bottles and cans, last year recycling rates dropped to just under 80% for the first time since 2009. Unless lawmakers step in immediately, the rates may well continue to drop, sending untold amounts of potentially recyclable material into the waste stream.

Gov. Brown and legislators want to overhaul the program, and they should. It’s inherently unsustainable, victimized by its own success; the revenue the state relies on to support it — the deposits consumers pay on bottled goods — goes down as the recycling rate goes up. To make matters worse, the subsidies needed to ensure adequate recycling centers to serve the entire state are based on a number of factors entirely out of the state’s control like labor costs, rent and global demand for plastic or aluminum.

But starving the program while waiting for an overhaul is not the answer. Legislators must include the appropriate amount to fully fund the program in the next fiscal year’s budget. Then we can talk about the best way to reform the program for another successful 30 years.