One week after the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued a report accusing five of the state’s largest energy providers with creating artificial power shortages during the energy crisis of 2000-2001, the energy companies are responding. Mirant Corp., one of the providers named in report, says the CPUC’s report failed to provide all of the facts, including “a complete outage report promised by the CPUC verifying when and why plants were not producing power.”
The report alleges that Mirant and four other power companies failed to operate their power plants at full capacity, forcing southern Californians to endure four days of rolling blackouts in 2001. Duke Energy Corp., another company named in the report, has also denounced it for a failure to address all of the issues.
Gov. Gray Davis called the companies’ alleged actions “inexcusable” and has called for an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.
