Michael R. Peevey

Michael R. Peevey is a pivotal figure in California’s energy revolution providing dynamic leadership as a corporate officer in a Fortune 500 company, an entrepreneur and president of California’s most powerful energy regulatory agency, the California Public Utilities Commission. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics at the University of California, Berkeley, before starting his career as an economist in Washington, D.C. In 1973 he helped found the California Council of Environmental and Economic Balance (CCEEB), an organization of unions, businesses, governments, and others, serving as president until 1984. Peevey then joined Southern California Edison Company, one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, rising to president in 1990.

In 1995, he co-founded New Energy Ventures, an energy supply and services company later sold to AES for $92 million. When the energy crisis of 2000-2001 hit California, Governor Gray Davis

asked Peevey to be his chief adviser to navigate the troubled times. In 2002 Davis appointed him to the PUC and named him president. Peevey continued in that role under Davis and Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown. After retiring from the PUC at the end of 2014, he turned his attention to writing this insider’s account of California’s storied environmental and energy policies over the last 40 years.