Sierra Club Filing Criticizes Public Engagement Process and Utility Oversight at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission

Oklahoma City, OK -- In a filing submitted to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC) on Wednesday, Sierra Club was critical of the non-existent public engagement process and utility oversight role of the OCC while offering recommendations for improvement. This filing supplemented earlier Sierra Club comments in this docket that addressed electric vehicles, so-called “renewable” natural gas, and other topics. 

Sierra Club’s critiques on public engagement are specific to the role of the OCC in overseeing Integrated Resource Plans (IRPs), in which utilities set out their tentative long-term plans, including power plant retirements and new investments by resource type. Just this year, the OCC never publicly announced the submission of draft IRPs by either Oklahoma Gas & Electric Company (OG&E) or Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO). The OCC never posted the drafts online for the public to access. Then the OCC only provided a three-day notice for a “public meeting” for the public to comment on OG&E’s draft IRP--which, again, was never posted on the regulator’s website. 

The OCC could improve its role as monopoly electric utility regulators as well. OCC rules do not allow for discovery, witness examination, or the submission of written comments into a formal record, in IRP proceedings, and also do not call on the commissioners to provide any formal guidance on the reasonableness of a utility’s plans. This means, in practice, that the utilities neither respond to criticism nor improve their plans, thereby risking the possibility that ratepayers will wind up paying for a utility’s poor planning. A meaningful IRP process, by contrast, could have probed the inexplicable divergence between PSO’s and OG&E’s 2021 IRPs. PSO will retire all of its coal within the next 5 years while scaling up its investments in renewable energy and no plans for new fracked gas power plants. Meanwhile, OG&E plans to continue operating three coal plants into the 2040s in addition to building four new fracked gas units over the next decade. The OG&E IRP fails to test the cost-competitiveness of its coal plants or model how customers might save money through earlier coal retirements and replacements with clean, lower-cost renewable energy. 

Sierra Club’s filing is part of a wide-ranging solicitation docket, OCC Cause No. PUD 202000083, that touches on a variety of topics. The OCC hearing is scheduled to begin at 9:30 AM on Thursday, October 21, 2021. A link to get more information and watch the hearing can be found here. Sierra Club’s filing can be found here. 

Matthew Miller, Staff Attorney for Sierra Club, released the following statement: 

“The long-range energy planning process at the OCC utterly lacks a meaningful public engagement process. To make matters worse, due to the toothless nature of these proceedings under current rules and practices, stakeholders cannot effectively investigate and critique the utilities’ plans, and the Commission itself provides no guidance on the very plans that will translate into enormous long-term impacts on ratepayers. 

“The status quo at the OCC is a disservice to the customers of monopoly electric utilities like OG&E, which says it plans on operating uneconomical, highly polluting coal plants into the late 2040s--without conducting any analysis to support that plan--even though affordable and reliable renewable power, plus energy efficiency investments, could save folks millions of dollars every year while protecting our natural resources and improving public health.”