A former Department of Energy policy adviser launched a nonprofit this week that aims to modernize utility regulations and lower energy bills.
Charles Hua, who worked in DOE’s loan office during the Biden administration, will lead PowerLines, which will focus on the regulation of electricity and gas by public utility commissions.
“PUCs, in our view, are the most important body for energy consumers that nobody is talking enough about, nobody knows enough about, nobody is thinking enough about,” said Hua, who now works as a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
State PUCs regulate how much people pay for electricity and how much utilities invest in different forms of energy. About 200 PUC commissioners nationally oversee a total of more than $200 billion of annual utility spending, according to Hua.
