JR DeShazo is quoted in a recent column in the Los Angeles Times on the rise of community choice aggregators (CCAs) and their effects on California’s major electric utilities. “The pressure they’ve placed on the [investor-owned utilities] has produced a focus on competition that did not exist before,” said DeShazo, director of the Luskin Center for Innovation and co-author of a 2016 study on CCAs. “So a competitive dynamic already has emerged that has been beneficial to customers.” Only a small number of states have legalized these government-affiliated, non-traditional utilities, which now serve almost 2 million Californians.