Gov. Newsom Has One Last Chance to Rein in Wildfire Costs On Our Electric Bills
Source: Capitol Weekly |Opinion by Mark Toney, Executive Director of TURN
Electricity bills have skyrocketed over the past few years for residential and business customers of Pacific Gas & Electric, SoCal Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — in large part because of the $40 billion customers have paid to cover California’s wildfire costs.
SB 905 would help ensure utilities don’t get overpaid for work that already benefits the company by requiring the California Public Utilities Commission to examine whether the profit margins utilities earn on wildfire-related spending — like undergrounding power lines — are justified. This work already protects utilities from costly wildfire lawsuits, and that protection shouldn’t come with an extra reward: outsized profit margins billed to customers who are struggling to keep the lights on.
Source: Communications Daily | By Philip Athey
The Utility Reform Network said the monitoring period in the proposal is too long and could subject California Lifeline customers to two years of price increases before a higher subsidy level is introduced. The group instead recommended an eight-month monitoring period with an updated subsidy level presented in 12 months.
Nearly all industry and public advocacy organizations said they support a proposed decision from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to increase the subsidy level and minimum service requirements for the state's Lifeline program, suggesting only minor changes and clarifications. But one, Assurance Wireless, said the changes in the proposal were so significant that they potentially overstep the CPUC’s legislative mandate and raise the question of federal preemption.
Source: Capitol Weekly | By Opinion by Mark Toney, Executive Director of TURN
SB 905 would help ensure utilities don’t get overpaid for work that already benefits the company by requiring the California Public Utilities Commission to examine whether the profit margins utilities earn on wildfire-related spending — like undergrounding power lines — are justified. This work already protects utilities from costly wildfire lawsuits, and that protection shouldn’t come with an extra reward: outsized profit margins billed to customers who are struggling to keep the lights on.
Electricity bills have skyrocketed over the past few years for residential and business customers of Pacific Gas & Electric, SoCal Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — in large part because of the $40 billion customers have paid to cover California’s wildfire costs.
Source: Canary Media | By Jeff St. John
Google and PG&E have been tussling with the Sierra Club, The Utility Reform Network, and others over how to allocate the cost of connecting that 250-MW “large load” to the utility transmission grid. The big issue? How much of that cost should be borne by PG&E customers at large versus by Google itself.
California has yet to take full advantage of rooftop solar, backup batteries, and other home devices to create virtual power plants (VPPs) that can help its stressed-out grid — even though it has more of those distributed energy resources than any other state. Earlier this month, utility Pacific Gas & Electric launched its latest effort to improve on that poor record via an ambitious partnership with friendly neighborhood tech giant Google and pro-electrification nonprofit Rewiring America.
Source: Politico | By Tyler Katzenberger, Chase Difeliciantonio, and Christine Mui
Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, a California-based nonprofit, told POLITICO he noticed ”more urgency” and “more positive signals from the governor’s office” to regulate data centers this year. He contrasted it to last year, when he said “there was not a sense that California had to be out front — and in fact, California was at risk of falling behind.”
What a difference a year makes. Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation that would have tracked data centers’ water use and signed a pared-back study measure on their electricity rates. Just a few months ago, he was downplaying the importance of the issue altogether.
Source: From the Office of Governor Gavin Newsom |
Mark Toney, Executive Director, TURN: “Collectively these measures protect ratepayers from subsidizing the significant energy consumption of data centers, ensuring that the data centers pay upfront for the extra infrastructure that must be built to operate them, and pay their fair share for wildfire mitigation and other ratepayer-funded programs. We are grateful for the Governor’s leadership to hold these data centers accountable.”
Yesterday, Governor Gavin Newsom signed the most comprehensive data center laws in the nation, providing communities more control on water, electricity, and land use.
Source: Martin CID Magazine | By Adrian Kessler
What emerged intact was a directive for the California Public Utilities Commission to study data center energy costs by 2027 — a study of a problem regulators already have the authority to investigate. An attorney for The Utility Reform Network called it toothless, and it is hard to read it any other way.
The state was supposed to be capping AI's appetite for power and water. What actually reached the governor's desk asks data centers to open their books — and even that is one veto from vanishing. The story California has been telling about itself this year is one of a state finally putting limits on the machines eating its power and water. The version that reached the governor is quieter and more revealing: it does not cap what a data center may draw.
Source: The Los Angeles Times | By Blanca Begert, Dakota Smith, Ian James
“Collectively these measures protect ratepayers from subsidizing the significant energy consumption of data centers, ensuring that the data centers pay upfront for the extra infrastructure that must be built to operate them, and pay their fair share for wildfire mitigation and other ratepayer funded programs,” Mark Toney, executive director of the Utility Reform Network, a ratepayer advocacy group, said.
California just took its first concrete steps toward regulating its growing data center industry as public appetite builds to crack down on the massive facilities. Amid widespread concerns about environmental and economic impacts of data centers, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed seven bills Monday morning aimed at protecting consumers from growing electricity costs and tracking the centers’ immense energy and water consumption.
Source: Communications Daily | By Philip Athey
Ryan Johnston, a telecom regulatory attorney for TURN, said that beyond the Verizon/Frontier merger requirements, the condition could undermine California’s Lifeline program and possibly even its carrier of last resort (COLR) obligations and minimum service quality requirements for both phone and internet use. While the state would receive its $1.4 billion in deployment funding, “when you look across at something like the California Lifeline program, saving about 1.7 million people $20 a month for the next 14 years, that comes out to... almost $5 billion itself,” he said. “There is not an equal weight on both sides of the scale here.”
Consumer advocates in California are calling on state officials to fight a provision added to the BEAD program by the Trump administration that would require the state to stop enforcing its net neutrality law and consumer protections on BEAD subgrantees for 14 years.
Source: Consumers’ Checkbook | By Herb Weisbaum
Ryan Johnston, a lawyer with The Telecom Regulatory Reform Network (TURN), a consumer advocacy group in California, called the original rule “a really good transparency tool” that was working as intended. “It’s pretty straightforward. We all know how to read food product labels,” Johnston said.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which has become far more business-friendly under the Trump administration, has ordered changes to its broadband label rule. The original rule, approved during the Biden administration, made it more difficult for companies to obscure the full prices of their services.
Source: Canary Media California Wire | By Jeff St. John
In addition, SB 905 would encourage utilities to measure how efficiently they’re using their existing grids — a precursor to setting up regulations that could steer them toward prioritizing lower-cost solutions over expensive grid upgrades. These aren’t the only affordability proposals on the table. The Utility Reform Network has a list of bills awaiting Newsom’s signature that offer even wonkier ways to ride herd on utility costs.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — who everyone knows is eyeing a run for the White House — has one last chance to show his true colors on energy and climate change. Rising electricity costs are a major issue in California, and Newsom must decide by the end of this month whether to sign a host of bills that could help cut utility rates while also advancing the state’s clean energy transition.