Don’t Blame Gov. Moonbeam for Energy Crisis

The state’s crawling with politicians who deserve blame for the energy meltdown. But one who definitely does not is Gov. Gray Davis’ old boss, Jerry Brown.

Gov. Moonbeam lit the way, in fact, to an energy-efficient future. He crusaded for causes and adopted policies that struck many people then as wacko. But today, the Moonbeam is helping to keep the lights on.

Edmund G. Brown Jr. was California’s entertaining, eccentric, enigmatic Democratic governor from 1975 to 1983. Now, at 62, he’s Oakland’s mayor. His persona’s the same, but his politics have changed. He’s now an independent.

Back in the ‘70s, the Brown administration adopted landmark home appliance and building standards. Refrigerators and air conditioners were made more efficient. Wall insulation was thickened.

“Those standards need to be updated,” says Guy Phillips, an energy consultant to Assemblyman Fred Keeley (D-Boulder Creek), one of the players trying to resolve the electricity crisis. “We could save another 30% in energy. The technology has passed us by.”

Back then, Phillips was assistant state resources secretary, one of the people implementing Brown’s programs. “Jerry Brown was the first,” Phillips recalls. “He was copied around the world.”

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At least as important, Brown promoted--and largely launched--wind, solar, geothermal and biomass generation in California.

Combined, these sources amount to only 10% of California’s electricity usage, according to the state Energy Commission. But add in cogeneration (reuse of natural gas heat), which Brown also promoted, and it totals up to about 17% of the state’s usage.

“In the current crisis we’re in, they’re proving to be absolutely critical,” says Michael Moore, a Republican member of the Energy Commission.

California now ranks fourth in the world in wind power. In the Brown era, it was No. 1.

Notes Jan Smutny-Jones, executive director of the Independent Energy Producers: “There really wasn’t a renewable energy industry until Brown.”

The young governor wanted to make California less reliant on nuclear and dirty coal-fired plants. So he offered major tax breaks and other financial incentives to invest in cleaner renewable energy.

Most of these incentives disappeared long ago. But Phillips says there’s now interest by the Legislature in restoring some programs and greatly expanding others that did survive.

“He was laughed at--it seemed by most of the world,” remembers Tom Quinn, then chairman of the state Air Resources Board and a Brown political strategist. “It’s what started the ‘Gov. Moonbeam’ image.”

Richard Maullin, then chairman of the state Energy Commission and now a political pollster, says: “Jerry got fascinated with all sorts of energy questions.

“He was always intrigued with cutting-edge ideas . . . like a kid who had discovered a new toy. He never ceased talking to anybody with a sliver of knowledge about it. . . . [He] was constantly harping at me, ‘Why don’t you do more of this, do more of that.’ ”

Brown was also ahead of his time regarding natural gas, a cleaner-burning fuel than coal. He believed California would be in short supply--which it now is--and beat the bushes in Canada, Alaska and Mexico for more gas.

Of course, Brown was at least as much showman as statesman. Maullin jokingly recalls some of these gas-scrounging treks as “somewhere between a photo op and a vital mission.”

Regardless, they smacked of vision.

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Brown really hasn’t mellowed. He’s as outspoken as ever.

“Somebody’s been asleep at the switch--not just for the last year, but for the last 10,” he says.

What needs to happen? “Collaboration between the president and the governor and private sector.” Pointing, he says, toward “efficiency, supply and [low] pollution.”

He insists environmental rules do not need to slow up building of power plants. “There’s bureaucratic inertia. Process paralysis.”

He adds: “Gray has to take action. And he has to get his PUC off the dime.

“You know, this is what I did with medflies,” he continues, referring to his ill-fated fight against the crop-threatening fruit bug in 1981. “ ‘Oh, maybe they’ll go away.’ All of a sudden they’re flying around by the hundreds.

“That’s what happened with energy. ‘Oh, it’s no big deal. Let the utilities do it.’ . . . As Henry Kissinger says, ‘When you know everything, it’s too late.’ ”

Brown always has had a way of bugging people.

Critics accused him 20 years ago of tilting at windmills. Whatever he was doing to them, it was a good thing.