More energy posts filled by Governor

Governor Schwarzenegger is acting swiftly to see that his people are in charge of the State's energy-related bureaucracy:

Amidst warnings of electricity shortages this summer and the need for expanded power supplies by the end of the decade, on Monday Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tapped a Pleasanton man to oversee approval of power plant plans and moved to fill a vacancy on a top regulatory panel.

Joseph Desmond, deputy secretary of the state Natural Resources Agency, will become chairman of the California Energy Commission, a five-member panel that studies energy issues and gives the go-ahead to power plant developers. Desmond, 41, who already commutes from Pleasanton to Sacramento to serve as Schwarzenegger's energy czar, said he would "continue to advise the governor on energy matters" in his new job. "I'm not so sure that there will be a big difference" in his role, he added.

Uncertainty about the state's energy future lingers nearly five years after an attempt to introduce competition into its regulated electricity industry disintegrated into an economically devastating spasm of rolling blackouts and soaring power costs. Today, monopoly utilities that deregulation advocates hoped to see shunted to supporting roles instead remain central actors, operating a still-untested procurement system in which they themselves compete against nonutility investors for power contracts.

In that uncertain environment, Desmond's expanded role could be helpful, said Severin Borenstein, executive director of the University of California Energy Institute. "Good communication between the governor's office and the California Energy Commission would be a very valuable thing as we think about how to organize -- notice I didn't say reorganize -- the electricity market going forward," he said.

Schwarzenegger also moved to fill a vacancy on the state Public Utilities Commission with John Bohn, a 67-year-old venture capitalist from San Francisco with a resume that includes stints as head of a leading credit rating firm and of the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Bohn is now chief executive of GlobalNet Venture Partners, and co-founded an Internet-based trading site for commodity chemicals.