SAN FRANCISCO – In less than three months, Pacific Gas & Electric, or PG&E, has filed a host of petitions with California regulators seeking to put ratepayers on the hook for giving the company more than $5.3 billion – with few benefits for its customers.
The investor-owned utility’s latest outrageous demand is a September 16 filing with the California Public Utilities Commission, or PUC. The petition requests roughly $1.5 billion to recover costs related to mitigation of wildfires and other catastrophes PG&E incurred between 2015 and 2020, according to a report by the investor analyst site Seeking Alpha.
The request comes weeks after PG&E on August 23 applied for an additional $201 million in guaranteed cost of capital that would help boost profits for its shareholders. On June 30, the monopoly utility asked for an enormous rate increase of $3.6 billion – an average utility bill increase of $36 a month – to pay for wildfire safety measures.
The combined value of all three requests is more than $5.3 billion.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, the average monthly utility bill for PG&E customers would rise by a further 4.7 percent, or $209 a month, if the PUC approved the requests for $1.5 billion and $201 million.
Ratepayers will see few, if any, benefits from the company’s attempted profit grab, nor will it benefit victims of the wildfires PG&E has caused.
Less than two weeks after PG&E filed its June request, the Dixie fire ignited, possibly because of a damaged power line owned and operated by PG&E. As of September 16, the fire had burned close to a million acres across five counties and was only three-fourths contained, according to California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
“PG&E is out of control, and if these outrageous profit grabs are approved by regulators, it will be open season on the wallets of ratepayers who already pay some of the highest electric bills in the country,” said EWG President and Co-founder Ken Cook, a Bay Area resident.
“The latest wildfire the company likely caused, which has destroyed communities and burned a swath of the state larger than Rhode Island, is still raging, and PG&E has the audacity to demand even more money from its captive customers,” Cook added.
Beyond its demands for more money, PG&E, along with Southern California Edison and San Diego Power & Electric, is also insisting the PUC adopt a plan to crush the state’s popular rooftop solar program.
The three big investor-owned utilities are furious at having to pay their customers for the excess energy generated from rooftop solar panels.
The program was deployed to reduce the state's reliance on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants to help combat the climate crisis. And it helps mitigate the risks of fires caused by downed or damaged power lines.
The only way to prevent future wildfires, such as those caused or likely caused by PG&E, is to reform the current model of centralized electricity distribution that sends energy hundreds of miles through often unmaintained and dilapidated power lines over dry, drought-ridden central and Northern California landscape covered in brush that fuels these fires.
Locally generated and distributed renewable electricity, primarily from solar, would dramatically reduce rolling blackouts initiated by PG&E and other utilities to prevent fires that are often triggered by power lines traversing the state.
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The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action. Visit www.ewg.org for more information
