(a)
In order to ensure the continued safe and reliable operation of public utility electric generating facilities, the commission shall require in any proceeding under Section 851 involving the sale, but not spinoff, of a public utility electric generating facility, for transactions initiated prior to December 31, 2001, and approved by the commission by December 31, 2002, that the selling utility contract with the purchaser of the facility for the selling utility, an affiliate, or a successor corporation to operate and maintain the facility for at least two years. The commission may require these conditions to be met for transactions initiated on or after January 1, 2002. The commission shall require the contracts to be reasonable for both the seller and the buyer.
(b)
Subdivision (a) shall apply only if the facility is actually operated during the two-year period following the sale. Subdivision (a) shall not require the purchaser to operate a facility, nor shall it preclude a purchaser from temporarily closing the facility to make capital improvements.
(c)
For those bayside fossil fueled electric generation and associated transmission facilities that an electrical corporation has proposed to divest in a public auction and for which the Legislature has appropriated state funds in the Budget Act of 1998 to assist local governmental entities in acquiring the facilities or to mitigate environmental and community issues, and where the local governmental entity proposes that the closure of the power plant would serve the public interest by mitigating air, water and other environmental, health and safety, and community impacts associated with the facilities, and where the local governmental entity and electrical corporation have engaged in significant negotiations with the purpose of shutting down the power plant, and where there is an agreement between the electrical corporation and the local governmental entity for closure of the facilities or for the local governmental entity to acquire the facilities, the commission shall approve the closure of these facilities or the transfer of these electric generation and associated transmission facilities to the local governmental entity and shall consider the utility transactions with the community to be just and reasonable for its ratepayers. For purposes of calculating the Competition Transition Charge, the commission shall not use any inferred market value for the facilities predicated on the continued use of the plant, the construction of successor facilities or alternative use of the site and shall net the costs of the depreciated book value of the power plant and the unrecovered costs of decommissioning, environmental remediation and site restoration against the net proceeds received from the local governmental entity for the acquisition or closure of the facilities. Thereafter, any net proceeds received from the ultimate disposition, by the electrical corporation, of the site shall be credited to recovery of Competition Transition Charges.