PG&E CEO Predicts Bills Won’t Rise in 2025 and Will Fall in 2026

Source: Mercury News  |  By George Avalos

PG&E CEO Patricia Poppe told NBC Bay Area the utility plans to keep rates flat for the next few years after a number of recent rate increases.  PG&E submitted rate proposals for the years 2027-2030, with the primary drivers being wildfire mitigation, transmission and distribution investments and solar incentives. Poppe said it’s an important change.  “It will be the lowest request we’ve made in over a decade,” she said. “It will also interrupt these double-digit increases. That’s not sustainable for our customers. We’ve got to be able to show customers we can do better work at a lower cost.”

But The Utility Reform Network (TURN) is concerned with these statements.  Lee Trotman, Communications Director for TURN says “PG&E can claim that customers might see slightly lower bills next year because current bills are artificially inflated due to the six rate increases last year.  One increase was for overspending by double the amount for wildfire mitigation efforts.  So a slight decrease from these inflated rates does little to help customers experiencing an affordability crisis.” He then added “only  50% of the revenue requirement  (the amount that PG&E gets to collect from customers) is part of the General Rate Case.  The other 50% of what PG&E collects comes from rate increases outside of the GRC.  Right now, PG&E  has 17 rate increase requests pending at the CPUC so we can’t imagine that rates will going down if even half of the 17 increases are approved.  As always, the proof will be if customers’ bills decrease instead of increase.”