Reflects Calif. Worries President Bush today will order employees in all 500,000 federal buildings nationwide to conserve energy in some cases, by cutting back on air conditioning in an effort to prevent California's power crisis from becoming a national one, administration officials said. Federal employees everywhere will be urged to turn off idle office equipment, officials said. Lights and escalators may be turned off, and thermostats turned to 78 degrees, at peak hours in California and other Western states facing power shortages, officials said. Bush, after maintaining for months that the rolling blackouts in California were a problem that could be solved only by the state, plans to begin moving aggressively to show that he takes the situation seriously, an official said. Washington Post Duke's Offer to Davis Denounced Lawmakers criticize Duke Energy's pledge of political help if state drops investigations.
Company says it was trying to remedy crisis.
Lawmakers and consumer advocates Wednesday denounced an expansive proposal in which a major North Carolina power supplier offered political support to Gov. Gray Davis if Davis would end antitrust and other investigations and stop criticizing electricity deregulation. Duke Energy, one of the largest independent power producers in California, initiated talks with the Davis administration in March. May 2 Opening another front in California's war against electricity generators, the lieutenant governor and a state assemblywoman sued five of the largest ones today, charging that they had illegally gouged the state by billions of dollars. The suit, filed in a state court here, seeks a return of the alleged overcharges as well as penalties and an injunction against future abuses. The plaintiffs did not say how much they were seeking, except to put the overcharges at many billions of dollars.