Please sign my letter to the Public Advocates Office, the only office tasked with representing PG&E's rate payers concerns. My letter asks for relief from PG&E's rate hikes: 9% last year followed by an 18% increase this year. In their four year plan, rates will continue to rise, getting to 40% and nearly, 60% respectively for electricity and gas, as compared to rates in 2021. Not only will these increases bring households and businesses to the brink, but PG&E is asking for, essentially a blank check, using the funds to generate profits at the expense of consumers. My letter provides the reasoning behind these statements and citations from reputable sources backing up my arguments. Please read and decide for yourselves whether to sit back or speak back to PG&E. Here is the letter:

 

Director Matt Baker
Public Advocate, CPUC
505 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, California 94102 

Dear Mr. Baker, 

We are writing to you as the director of the Public Advocate’s office, the one agency tasked to represent the interests of rate payers. We need your help in representing our concerns regarding PG&E’s 2022 and further rate increases over the next four years. With the onset of cold weather, we have been hit with hugely escalated utility bills. Despite all our energy saving actions and tolerating uncomfortably cold homes, many of us are straining to pay these inflated utility bills. 

The sting of this year’s PG&E bills stems from a 9% rate increase in 2022. But there’s more. PG&E has filed a four year General Rate Case for another 18% increase in electric and gas rates in 2023 and continued escalations through 2026 to get to an increase of 39.25% and 56.9% in electricity and gas rates, respectively, over 2021 rates. (1)  From the funds generated, $12.8 billion will be for new investments, chief of which will be undergrounding the first 3,600 miles of a goal of 10,000 miles of buried power lines. The four year plan will not cover future inflation in prices for gas, electricity, their transmission nor will it cover state mandated expenditures for low income customers and energy efficiency mandates. Those expenses will require their own rate increases. ( 2) 

This four year plan of escalating utility rates should be opposed.
1. A 40%-nearly 60% increase in PG&E bills will be unaffordable for those already doing without basic necessities and it will depress the productivity of businesses and the general economy. 

2. However, even if households and businesses have money to spare, AARP (1) and Grist (3) argue PG&E’s multiyear rate increases for undergrounding serve the company’s profit motive while neglecting more timely and less expensive ways of wildfire risk mitigation. 

Here’s the background. The cause of the wildfires started by PG&E equipment was found to be due primarily if not entirely to the company’s inattention to maintenance and inspection of equipment (1). If concerned for safety, PG&E could have corrected these deficiencies using funds set aside for operating costs. Instead, PG&E is raising money for undergrounding thousands of miles of power lines. Why? Because businesses see maintenance as expenses that subtract from profits while undergrounding is a type of capital spending that increases a company’s value. (1)  So this follows PG&E’s well documented policy of profits over safety (6); it should be opposed in the interest of rate payers. 

Grist compared PG&E’s wildfire mitigation strategy with that of three other West coast utilities and found PG&E to be an outlier in its emphasis on undergrounding. San Diego Gas and Electric (SDGE), Portland General Electric (PGE) and Puget Sound Energy (PSE) all combine undergrounding with less expensive techniques as flame proofing existing structures with fire resistant materials, insulating wires, installing sensors to shut off power to broken lines before they hit the ground, replacing wooden poles with metal ones, equipment maintenance and vegetation clearing. All three utilities take care not to run up customers’ bills. SDGE is planning all of 100 miles of under grounding and spokespersons for both PSE and Portland’s PGE issued explicit statements they balance undergrounding with less expensive mitigation strategies to spare customers from escalating bills. (3) PSE, a for profit utility shows us profits can be made without gouging customers. PSE gets developers to share the cost of undergrounding during construction or, if cities or individuals request overhead wires to be buried, the cost is shared with the municipalities and affected customers. (4)  So even compared to another for profit utility company, PG&E appears more aggressive in its use of customers to generate investment money; this money grab should be opposed. 

3. PG&E’s plans for undergrounding should be opposed also because the plan is open ended: the total miles of undergrounding, the cost and timeline are all without limits. The four year plan sets aside $12.8 billion for 3,600 miles of undergrounding, but that’s only 36% of PG&E’s10,000 mile goal. So what other shoes will drop? Estimates of the cost of undergrounding vary by two fold; CPUC estimates $4 million/mile but PG&E cites an aspirational $2 million/mile. And final costs can be expected to exceed estimates. Furthermore, there is no timeline for the work. In Butte County, PG&E is planning on undergrounding 70 miles of power lines/year. At this rate, 10,000 miles of undergrounding will take 143 years. But PG&E says they can speed up to 1,000 miles/year; a fantastic, aspirational feat CEO Pattie Poppe calls “the moonshot”. (3) So the time line is either 143 years or 10 years. But California burns every year so how can we wait even 10 years for relief? 

4. PG&E’s multiyear rate plan is a blank check and PG&E’s history shows they cannot be trusted with blank checks. Between 2007 and 2016, auditors found PG&E had diverted $125 million set aside for undergrounding power lines. There was no accounting for where those millions of dollars went. (5)  And trust was misplaced in the San Bruno rate case of 2007; funds earmarked for replacing aging pipelines were not spent as intended, so in 2010 PG&E requested and got another $5 billion for the job. (1)  Before the work completed, the pipeline exploded, killing eight San Bruno residents, injuring 58, destroying 38 homes and damaging 70 others.(6)  And now the company wants us to trust them with $12.8 billion for work to be completed in 10 or maybe143 years? 

In sum, Director Matt Baker, we are asking you to use your power to support us in opposing PG&E’s General Rate Case for the following reasons: 

1. It will impose a financial strain on households and businesses already economically stressed, thus increasing poverty and depressing the general economy. 

2. It is more of PG&E’s practice of profit over safety. 

3. It is an abuse of rate payers, using them to fund the company’s investment plans. 

4. It is open ended with no limits of the total job, no limits on the time to completion and cost estimates that vary two fold even at the proposal stage. 

5. Based on its history, PG&E cannot be trusted to spend the monies raised for its intended purpose. 

Thank you,Coalition of Rate Payers (CORP) 

REFERENCES:
(1) “AARP Files Challenge to PG&E’s Proposed Rate Increases” states.aarp.org>calif 6/1/2022. 

(2) 2023 General Rate Case, pge.com 

(3). “Can burying power lines prevent California’s next big wildfire?” grist.org 8/23/2021. 

(4)  “PSE’s Electric Power System” https://psebainbridge.blob.core.windows.net/media/D

(5)  “PG&E diverted millions from putting lines underground, audit finds.  San        Chronicle,” 12/10/2019.

(6)  “California Utility Found Guilty of Violations in 2010 Gas Explosion That Killed 8” New York Times 8/9/2016.