Source: KQED | By Alix Soliman, Guy Marzorati, and Kevin Stark

Right now, in California, if you use a lot of electricity, you pay more. If you live an energy-efficient lifestyle, you pay less. Sylvie Ashford, an energy analyst for The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, said that won’t change. The group supports the new fixed rate, which Ashford said will incentivize people to convert to clean energy. “Consumers report one of the biggest barriers to buying electric vehicles and electric heat pumps to be the high and rising cost of electricity,” Ashford said. “When it becomes 8% to 10% cheaper on each kilowatt hour, your operating costs on your electric vehicle or your electric heat pump become that much more competitive with polluting gas alternatives.” Ashford said that while fixed rates are a good first step, the state must do more to address California’s skyrocketing electricity fees, like keeping utility revenue requirements and shareholder profits in check.

Starting late next year, most California residents will see a new fixed charge of up to $24.15 on their monthly electric bill. In exchange for the new charge, the price of electricity will drop by between 5 cents and 7 cents per kilowatt hour.

Source: The OC Register | By Teri Sforza

The largest group getting intervenor comp, by far, is TURN. It requested $26.4 million between 2020 and early 2024, and was awarded $24.8 million. Over that time, it has saved Californians hundreds of millions of dollars, its accounting shows. In a typical year, its legal staff of 12 attorneys and five policy analysts work on about 100 proceedings at the PUC. For example, TURN recently: Helped win a ruling preventing SDG&E from recovering $514 million from customers that it spent on wildfire mitigation before a reasonableness review by the PUC. Helped win a ruling preventing Edison from recovering $85 million from customers that it spent on tree trimming in non–high fire risk areas. Helped win $400 million in savings for PG&E, SCE, SoCal Gas and SDG&E ratepayers by getting PUC to reduce “Cost of Capital” profit rates (more on that in a minute)…

Electric rates, gas rates, water rates — they go up. And up. And up. Policing these regularly scheduled consumer agonies — or rubber-stamping them, as critics often charge — is the job of the California Public Utilities Commission. This powerful regulator is charged with ensuring that rate hikes and policy decisions are fair and justified

Source: Los Angeles Daily News | By Brooke Staggs

Ever-increasing rates are why Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, said most people likely haven’t even noticed the climate credits they’ve received on their gas and electric bills over the past decade. The utility reform group TURN is backing a bill from Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, that would use revenue from cap-and-trade to create a Climate Equity Trust Fund. The idea, Toney said, is to have utilities use money from that fund to help, say, build out electric charging stations for trucks in Ontario rather than having Edison pass those costs along to all ratepayers on their monthly bills. Something’s gotta give when it comes to utility prices. So Toney said building on the successes of the cap-and-trade program just makes sense.

In April, Southern California Edison customers will see an $86 credit automatically appear on their monthly bill, while Southern California Gas customers will get a credit of $73. Then, in October, Edison customers will see their bills drop by another $86. Similar rebates are being doled out this year to customers of investor-owned utilities throughout California, with more than $1.6 billion due back to electric customers, $1 billion to natural gas customers and $160 million to small businesses.

Source: ABC 7 News | By Tim Johns

The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, says it's a move that would likely reduce the rates customers pay for power by anywhere from 5 to 7 cents per kilowatt hour. "It's going to make utility bills more affordable for low-income households and reduce the volatility of month-to-month bills. And it will promote electrification," said TURN's Matthew Freedman. A welcome response for people like Freedman, who says regulators have a lot more work to do to make bills more affordable. "PG&E is spending too much money. Collecting too much in profits and not being held accountable for its mismanagement of the system," he said.

At the historic Orinda Theatre, the past few weeks have been anything but business as usual. Owner Derek Zemrak says he made the decision to close the theater on Mondays and Tuesday after receiving a PG&E bill for nearly $6,300, almost double what he normally pays. "I was shocked. I knew PG&E had raised rates for commercial properties. I just didn't realize it was going to be that high," Zemrak said. The skyrocketing bills aren't just hitting Zemrak. To tackle the issue, the California Public Utilities Commission is proposing a new $24 fixed charge on monthly electric bills.

Source: CBS News | By Kayla Moeller

The Utility Reform Network, a consumer advocacy group, says the proposal is a step in the right direction. "First of all, the rate people pay for usage would be reduced," said Matthew Freedman of the Utility Reform Network. If passed, customers would see a separate line on their bill for $24.15. However, that doesn't mean your bill would go up. That's because the flat rate would restructure your bill. The CPUC says customers' usage rates would be reduced by 5 cents per kilowatt hour. "For example, a PG&E customer that lives in the Sacramento area, the average customer would see about $1.50 a month net savings on their bills," Freedman said.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has a new proposal to lower the cost of your utility bill, but it's causing controversy as opponents are worried it could do the opposite. What's being proposed is a restructuring of how customers pay utility bills.

Source: KPBS | By Andrew Bracken & Lara McCaffrey

Here's consumer advocate Mark Toney of the Utility Reform Network. A lot of people are questioning why is it that SDG&E needs more money , that shareholders seem to be doing just fine. It's the customers that are hurting. It's the customers that are feeling the pain , but it's the shareholders who are reaping the gain.

And not surprisingly , over the past few years , we've seen an increase in the number of people falling behind on their bills. At the same time , SDG&E reported record profits in 2023 , leading many to wonder why prices are so high.

Source: KPBS San Diego | By Erik Anderson

“A lot of people are questioning why is it, that SDG&E needs more money,” said Mark Toney, the executive director of The Utility Reform Network (TURN). “Their shareholders seem to be just fine. It’s the customers that are hurting. It’s the customers that are feeling the pain. But it’s the shareholders that are reaping the gains.” TURN said regulators should not have approved the increase, asking the CPUC to disallow more than one rate hike a year. “We can’t simply have unlimited amounts of money spent on wildfire safety,” Toney said. “We want the most cost-effective measures to be spent on wildfire safety because these bills are going sky high.”

San Diego Gas & Electric is going up in March, just a month after the utility reported record profits for 2023. The rate hike eliminates some savings from an unexpected 11% cut in delivery charges in January. The delivery charges jump 8.7% in the March billing cycle and the average customer bill will increase about $8 a month. The move comes after the investor-owned utility posted record profits during the last calendar year. Company profits in 2023 hit a new record of $936 million, $21 million more than the previous year.

Source: KGTV ABC 10 San Diego | By Jeff Lasky

“That’s what makes people upset," said Mark Toney, executive director of the watchdog group TURN (The Utility Reform Network). "Right now, it feels like customers are bearing all the pain. And SDGE investors and executives get all the gain.” TURN calls for CPUC to investigate the wildfire projects to ensure SDGE did not pad the projects to increase profit and “to make sure that the right measures were taken in the right locations with the right results and at the most cost-effective manner for the ratepayers.”

Power bills in San Diego are going up. Effective Mar. 1, San Diego Gas & Electric is implementing a new rate increase. The company expects the increase to work out to a little more than $8 per month for the average customer. SDGE points out that even with the rate increase, customers are still paying less now than they did at this time in 2023, due to an 11% rate cut that took effect in January. However, critics say SDGE should not be raising rates at all, considering its announcement this week that it broke its all-time record for earnings for a second consecutive year, leading to record performance for stockholders.

Source: CBS News | By Kristine Lazar

Mark Toney with The Utility Reform Network or TURN, a consumer advocacy group, says its problematic that utilities get to decide if they are liable for damage. "The challenge is, they get to decide whether they're at fault or whether you're at fault, or whether a third party or the weather, or things out of their control," Toney said. "So what that means is, they decide whether they're at fault. I will tell you most of the time they do not find themselves at fault, not surprisingly." Toney explained small claims court is an option, with the limit for individuals at $12,500 and for businesses, it's half of that at $6,250. "It's almost not worth the effort," Toney said.

Some Long Beach small businesses are blaming SoCal Edison after a power outage and subsequent surge fried their pricey equipment, begging the question of who is responsible for it all. A dental office and veterinary clinic both lost equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars following an October 2023 power surge.

Source: Grist | By Akielly Hu

It’s not uncommon for state regulators to fine utility companies for charging ratepayers for lobbying efforts. In 2022, for instance, the California Public Utilities Commission fined SoCalGas $10 million for using ratepayer money to lobby against local gas bans, federal energy efficiency standards, and building electrification policies. But according to Katy Morsony, a staff attorney at the consumer advocacy group The Utility Reform Network, writing those penalties and detailed annual reporting into law will make it much easier to hold utilities accountable. Morsony also clarified that the bills wouldn’t prevent utilities from engaging in lobbying — they would simply be forced to fund that advocacy work exclusively with money from shareholders. But as households face rising energy costs, she added that any policy to prevent utilities from unlawfully extracting more money from consumers will make a tangible difference. “It’s common sense ratepayer protections,” Morsony said. “When you’re in the energy affordability crisis that we’re in, every dollar counts.”

When households in the United States pay their gas and electric bills, they’re paying for energy, the wires and pipelines it takes to get that energy into their home, and the costs of maintaining that infrastructure. But those monthly payments could also be funding efforts by utilities to lobby against climate policies. While federal law prohibits utilities from recovering lobbying expenses from customers, consumer advocates say that those rules lack teeth and aren’t sufficiently enforced. Now, states are taking the lead to ban the practice. According to the utility watchdog group Energy and Policy Institute, lawmakers in eight states, including California and Maryland, have introduced bills this year that would block utilities from charging customers for the costs of lobbying, advertising, trade association dues, and other political activities. The measures build on a growing trend in state policy: Last year, Colorado, Connecticut, and Maine became the first states in the nation to pass comprehensive laws preventing utilities from passing on the costs of lobbying to ratepayers.

Source: CBS News Sacramento | By Tori Apodaca

"This fixed charge would just shift some fixed cost out of electricity rates onto a new line item on customer's bills, a fixed charge," said Sylvie Ashford, energy and climate policy analyst at The Utility Reform Network (TURN), which advocates for ratepayers. TURN supports the fixed rate on customers' bills. Ashford said it would cut down energy use for all customers. “Because the fixed charge is removing costs from usage ($/kWh) rates, usage rates go down for all customers, “ Ashford said. “Thus, the bill impacts from the TURN/NRDC proposal are roughly $8-10 in monthly bill savings for low-income customers, and roughly $3-7 monthly bill increases for other customers, depending on energy usage.”

Low-income customers who are enrolled in the CARE program receive a 30-35% discount on their electric bill and a 20% discount on their natural gas bill and FERA customers receive an 18% discount on their electricity bill. The new tiered system for a fixed rate on your utility bill would be based on how much you make, following the existing CARE and FERA programs. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) currently has several proposals in front of it that it believes would lower costs for lower-income families. It was passed back in 2022, but now some democratic legislators are pushing back with Assembly Bill 1999.

Source: Los Angeles Times | By Sammy Roth

“We’re not interested in seeing anybody’s bill goes up. But it’s a zero-sum game,” said Matthew Freedman, an attorney at the Utility Reform Network, a consumer watchdog group. “Somebody is going to pay more, and somebody is going to pay less. That’s just how it works.”

Confronting the climate crisis won’t be cheap. California is trying to figure out who will pay. Under a series of proposals being considered by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s appointees to the Public Utilities Commission, the wealthy would be forced to cough up, in the form of flat fees on their monthly electric bills. But so would middle-class families. The debate has raised difficult questions of socioeconomic justice and climate progress — and prompted a group of Democratic lawmakers to try to repeal a monthly fee requirement they approved less than two years ago.

Source: Canary Media | By Jeff St. John

Toney of The Utility Reform Network agrees with the Sierra Club and NRDC that California needs to find ways to help its residents meet the state’s aggressive electrification goals. ​“We’re absolutely joined at the hip when it comes to leadership on climate policy,” he said. ​“Where we differ is on the revenue streams to pay for that.” So far, ratepayers have largely borne the costs of the gigawatts of solar power the state’s major utilities have signed contracts for over the past decade and a half, as well as for the roughly $1.5 billion in utility electric-vehicle charging programs launched in the past half-decade. Toney says he’d like to see state lawmakers direct more taxpayer dollars to fund these programs instead. Nor does Toney think that SCE should be allowed to add new building-electrification costs to its customers’ bills until it can explain how that doesn’t just duplicate other sources of funding.

When SoCal Edison first announced its plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help 250,000 customers install heat pumps back in 2021, some building-electrification advocates saw it as the kind of proactive step utilities need to be taking to transition their customers off of fossil fuels and help California meet its ambitious climate targets. Others saw it as an unproven building-electrification strategy that could add new charges to already-expensive electric bills, without clear evidence of long-term cost reductions and climate benefits.

Source: LA Times | By Sammy Roth

California lawmaker Dave Min has introduced a bill that would ban California utility companies from spending customer money to fight climate action. The state senator, a Democrat from Irvine, crafted his legislation in response to Sacramento Bee reporting showing how Southern California Gas Co. had attempted to spend ratepayer dollars to block climate and clean energy policies — a great reminder of the power of local journalism. You can check out the Bee’s earlier reporting, by Ari Plachta and Joe Rubin, here and here. Also see my own previous reporting on SoCalGas’ use of customer money.

The Biden administration has finalized approval of $1.1 billion to help Pacific Gas & Electric continue operating the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant past 2025, the Associated Press reports. No big surprises here; federal officials had been forecasting the move for months, as I’ve reported previously. The argument for keeping nuclear plants open longer is that unlike solar and wind farms, they can generate power around the clock. If it were up to many red-state lawmakers, though, we’d just keep burning coal. Just look at Utah, where the Salt Lake Tribune’s Tim Fitzpatrick reports legislators are making another effort to seize control of the coal-fired Intermountain power plant from the city of Los Angeles, which intends to stop burning coal there.

Source: Orange County Register | By Andre Mouchard

Shareholders, not consumers, should pay for any lobbying or other political speech undertaken by their local utility. That is the simple idea at the heart of SB938, a bill proposed this month by state Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine. The pitch comes in the wake of a 2023 investigation by the Sacramento Bee and a state report, released last August, in which the Public Advocates Office said Southern California Gas Co. billed ratepayers tens of millions of dollars to pay for political efforts aimed at changing clean-air regulations in ways that would be profitable for the utility. Min’s bill, which was filed this week and is likely to change as lawmakers debate it in coming months, would apply to privately held utilities and establish specific definitions of the types of activities that can’t be billed to ratepayers. The bill also would require public reporting on the financing of a utility’s political speech, and establish a penalty system for any violations.

Source: Daily Kos | By Dan Bacher

“At a time when customers are burdened with record breaking monthly utility bills, corporations need strong limits and meaningful penalties preventing spending of any ratepayer dollars on PR television commercials and lobbying the Public Utilities Commission to raise rates even higher,” said Mark Toney, Executive Director of The Utility Reform Network (TURN).

Senator Dave Min (D-Irvine) today introduced a bill, Senate Bill (SB) 938, that will prohibit political lobbying by investor-owned utilities that can be charged to ratepayers. “While federal law technically prohibits utilities from passing lobbying costs onto their ratepayers, these laws are riddled with loopholes, which has allowed utility companies across the country to effectively engage in political lobbying using ratepayer money,” according to a statement from Min’s Office.

Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune | By Rob Nikolewski

The Utilities Reform Network (TURN), a consumer group based in San Francisco, is concerned that last-minute revisions approved by the CPUC on Thursday could leave ratepayers on the hook. “We’re very disturbed that the proposed decision may allow PG&E to collect a $1.4 billion slush fund from ratepayers that it would use specifically to protect its shareholders from any liability for core performance,” TURN staff attorney Matthew Freedman said.

The California Public Utilities Commission approved a plan Thursday to keep the Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo open for at least six more years. The decision “is an important measure towards supporting the reliability of the California electricity grid as we move forward in our energy transition,” said Karen Douglas, the commissioner assigned to the case. “California’s path forward in the energy transition hasn’t always been easy and won’t always be easy.”

Source: Capital and Main | By Mark Kreidler

“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” said Mark Toney, executive director of TURN, the utility reform network that lobbies for affordable and accessible power for Californians. “I think that people will see a $50 per month increase in one year,” or an extra $600 during that time. Households will struggle more. Over the past four years, PG&E’s bill increases have dramatically outstripped inflation, according to data compiled by TURN. While the Consumer Price Index showed an 18% jump from January 2020 to September 2023, PG&E’s electric rates went up 51% for most households — and, remarkably, 67% for those enrolled in the company’s CARE program for rate relief, according to the advocacy group’s analysis. There’s a far less expensive option, TURN’s Toney said. Called “hardening,” it involves insulating existing power lines with fire-protective coating. It can be completed more quickly, and for about $800,000 per mile — and Southern California Edison has already done it successfully. As always, the burden of bearing this cost will fall hardest on lower-income households, even if they qualify for PG&E discounts. Using data collected from the company’s own disconnection reports, TURN found that the percentage of PG&E customers who were four months behind on their bills rose from 3.8% in 2019 to 7.0% last July. “That’s a stunning increase,” Toney said.

Beginning Jan. 1, power giant Pacific Gas & Electric, which serves 16 million Californians, will impose a 13% increase on the average household bill. That comes to $32.50 a month, or nearly $400 extra per year.

Source: NBC San Diego | By Kelvin Henry

Critics like Mark Toney, Executive Director of The Utility Reform Network, say their earning model is unsustainable. “SDG&E is recording record profits. Nearly a billion dollars in the past year and this is something that’s of a lot of concern,” Executive Director of The Utility Reform Network Mark Toney told NBC 7's Kelvin Henry. Utility companies like SDG&E often cite climate change, the rise of electric vehicles and the battery storage necessary to sustain them as factors driving costs up. Toney says costs are about priorities. "Every utility company, including SDG&E, has choices to make as to where to make their investment and how to make things as safe as possible at the most cost-effective manner," Toney said. "There needs to be a cap on annual rate increases and the cap should be no more than the cost of living adjustment that social security recipients receive," Toney said.

SDG&E's profits have soared in recent years and ratepayers are taking notice after seeing higher monthly bills. The utility company that serves more than 3 million people in San Diego County says a large reason why their profits are up is because of record investments that improve their products for ratepayers. The utility company reportedly made over $900 million in profits in 2022.

Source: The San Diego Union Tribune | By Rob Nikolewski

“If we’re going to stop that trajectory, we will need to look ahead and think about the ultimate price tag of some of these initiatives,” said Jennifer Dowdell, senior policy expert at The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, a consumer group based in San Francisco. “At this point, we are operating in a rate environment that has no margin of safety.” “The utilities will invest in anything the regulator indicates they’d like them to invest in,” said Dowdell of TURN, “because every dime they spend on rate base, they make money.” For Dowdell, the policy expert for the consumer group TURN, the auditor’s report shows the CPUC must keep a sharp eye on approving projects that go into the rate base because that “is a huge driver” in higher monthly bills that customers pay. “When you look at that rate base trajectory, that to me is the story,” Dowdell said, adding, “The commission and policymakers have to recognize that there may not be sufficient room in rates to fund every policy initiative.”

A review by the Union-Tribune of federal financial submissions shows SDG&E profits have been steadily increasing for about a generation, with the pace accelerating since 2008. Last year’s earnings came to $915 million, the highest in company history. At its current pace, the utility may crack the $1 billion mark by the end of 2023.