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The California electricity crisis, also known as the Western U.S. Energy Crisis of 2000 and 2001, was a situation in which the United States state of California had a shortage of electricity supply caused by market manipulations, illegal shutdowns of pipelines by the Texas energy consortium Enron, and capped retail electricity prices. The state suffered from multiple large-scale blackouts, one of the state's largest energy companies collapsed, and the economic fall-out greatly harmed Governor Gray Davis' standing. Drought, delays in approval of new power plants,〔Sweeney (2002), p. 109〕 and market manipulation decreased supply. This caused an 800% increase in wholesale prices from April 2000 to December 2000.〔Weare (2003), p. 1〕 In addition, rolling blackouts adversely affected many businesses dependent upon a reliable supply of electricity, and inconvenienced a large number of retail consumers. California had an installed generating capacity of 45GW. At the time of the blackouts, demand was 28GW. A demand supply gap was created by energy companies, mainly Enron, to create an artificial shortage. Energy traders took power plants offline for maintenance in days of peak demand to increase the price.〔http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/03/enron.tapes/ Tapes: Enron plotted to shut down power plant.〕 Traders were thus able to sell power at premium prices, sometimes up to a factor of 20 times its normal value. Because the state government had a cap on retail electricity charges, this market manipulation squeezed the industry's revenue margins, causing the bankruptcy of Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and near bankruptcy of Southern California Edison in early 2001.〔Weare (2003), p. 2–3〕 The financial crisis was possible because of partial deregulation legislation instituted in 1996 by the California Legislature (AB 1890) and Governor Pete Wilson. Enron took advantage of this deregulation and was involved in economic withholding and inflated price bidding in California's spot markets.〔(【引用サイトリンク】FERC Summary of findings )〕 The crisis cost between $40 to $45 billion.〔Weare (2003), p. 3–4〕 ==Causes== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「California electricity crisis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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