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SACRAMENTO — By pushing California to join other Western states in a regional organization to run the states’ power grids, federal energy regulators want something that will neither cut energy costs nor stave off blackouts, Western officials said Friday. 

Plus, officials said, not many states want to join a club with California as a member. 

“Given the problems in California now, I’m not sure who would want California to join them,” said a Western power official who asked to not be quoted by name. 

California officials said Friday they will go to court rather than join a regional transmission organization (RTO) they say would limit California’s ability to control its power grid by giving more authority to the federal government and other Western states. 

“We’re not going to give up our authority to resolve our problems,” said California Independent System Operator board chairman Michael Kahn. 

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is illegally trying to force California to join an RTO by making that a condition of limited electricity price caps the commission ordered this week, alleged Kahn and California Public Utilities Commissioner Loretta Lynch. 

That won’t help in the short run, they said, echoing earlier criticism by Gov. Gray Davis. 

Eventually, however, states will move toward RTOs, officials and analysts said. 

This week FERC approved an RTO spanning seven Western states that will control 90 percent of the lines from the Canadian border to southern Nevada. RTO West includes Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana, parts of Nevada and Utah, a tiny portion of Northern California and possibly the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. 

“RTO West can serve as an anchor for the ultimate formation of a West-wide RTO,” the commission said, noting new Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham’s recent support for a Western regional RTO. 

A second RTO known as Desert Star, made up of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, eastern Wyoming and the western Texas panhandle, expects to seek FERC approval next month. 

California should create its own RTO – essentially, the current California Independent System Operator – to work with its neighbors to form the sort of seamless, larger, more efficient energy market FERC envisions, California and other Western officials suggested. 

“As a short-term goal, most people believe there should be three Western RTOs, and as a long-term goal, merge those,” said Desert Star project manager Michael Raezer. 

Western states are too diverse and have too many operational barriers to merge their grids immediately, officials and analysts said. 

Eighty percent of power in the Pacific Northwest, for example, comes from federal hydroelectric plants, while the desert Southwest gets half of its power from publicly owned utilities. Most of California, however, receives its power from investor-owned utilities such as Pacific Gas & Electric, which recently sought bankruptcy protection. 

In theory, a larger regional market would erase the shortages in supply and competition that have driven up prices and prompted four days of rolling blackouts in California so far this year, said Stanford University economist Frank Wolak. 

However, sparsely populated but energy-rich Western states could be overpowered by California and see their relatively cheap energy rates increase in a seamless market, Wolak said. 

Nor is it apparent that a single RTO would bring benefits beyond the cooperation that already exists between states, said Erik Saltmarsh, chief counsel for the California Electricity Oversight Board.  

The minimal cost savings might be offset by the high cost of merging the states’ power grids, he said. 

“Everyday we schedule (power flow) from Montana to Los Angeles and from British Columbia to Phoenix,” Saltmarsh said. “We don’t view that as a problem.” 

FERC, he added, invests an RTO with “magical powers,” as if by joining all of California’s problems will go away. “We don’t think it’s necessary, it doesn’t do anything, it’s a distraction from the key problems and it doesn’t solve them.” 

That’s isolationist thinking that no longer works, said Stephen Angle, a former FERC attorney whose law firm now represents several power generators. 

FERC’s concern, Angle said, is that California has tried to go it alone but created problems “for itself that are spilling into other states.” 

An RTO “is a long-term solution,” Angle said. “They’re not going to be up and running in time for this summer. But there certainly is a need to integrate California into a larger market for the long term.” 

CONSERVATION 

Hoping to set an example for a power-short state, Gov. Gray Davis on Friday announced that state office buildings reduced energy use by an average of 20 percent in January and February. 

The measures have saved taxpayers $286,000, Davis said. 

The amount is paltry sum compared with the more than $5 billion the state has paid since January to keep California’s lights on, and such measures did not stop operators of the state power grid from declaring a Stage 2 power shortage emergency earlier this week. 

But in a news conference packed with state workers who applauded him when he entered, Davis defended the results, saying they came from only two months of effort. 

Davis also repeated promises that the state would escape its power woes within two years. 

At his side were David Freeman, former head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, who starts Tuesday as Davis’ energy czar, and Aileen Adams, secretary of the State and Consumer Services Agency. 

Adams oversaw the state conservation effort. 

She said workers were being barraged with power-saving instructions on everything from hand-written notes to on-hold messages. 

“We are tracking our bills for the first time,” Adams said. 

The message is already spreading to the private sector, Adams said. 

The trade group Building Owners and Managers Association has pledged to conserve energy in its 300 million square feet of California office space, Adams said. And McDonald’s restaurants have begun printing conservation messages on food tray liners. 

Davis also said his wife had managed to conserve power in the governor’s mansion by 34 percent in January and 63 percent in February. 

“Of course, it’s 55 degrees the whole time,” he said. “And I have to go to bed in a heavy sweatshirt and sweatpants, and there’s no light on in any room that we’re not in.”