Source: San Francisco Chronicle | By Julie Johnson

“Customers have hit the breaking point and have passed it,” said Matthew Freedman, an attorney for ratepayer advocate group The Utility Reform Network, which supports the fixed charge plan. “People who live in the Central Valley have taken it on the chin as rates have gone up.” “You have to start somewhere,” Freedman said. “Doing nothing is a bad choice.”

California regulators are set to vote Thursday on a major change to utility bills that could raise costs for some residents already burned with soaring rates, while lowering costs for others. The California Public Utilities Commission will decide whether to approve a $24.15 fixed charge on utility bills in exchange for lowering the per-unit price of electricity. The rule would apply to customers of Pacific Gas and Electric Co., San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison.

Source: NBC Bay Area | By Jaxon Van Derbeken

PG&E rates are clearly insane right now,” says Matt Freedman, an attorney with the ratepayer advocacy group TURN. He says one reason is our rates pay for things other than the cost of producing power. His breakdown indicates ratepayers pay six cents per kilowatt hour for wildfire efforts – including undergrounding power lines -- six cents more to subsidize solar and two cents on top of that for low-income subsidies. “Low-income customers in PG&E service territory are really facing a crisis of affordability,” Freedman says. “We saw 180,000 customers disconnected for nonpayment last year, and about a third of PG&E low-income customers are late in paying their bills right now.”

With the hefty increase so far this year, PG&E’s rates are now approaching those of Hawaii, a state with the unfortunate distinction of having the most expensive power in the nation. Hawaii has long paid the highest of any state for power – in part because as an island nation, oil must be shipped in from as far as Libya and Argentina. The cost to generate power accounts for about half the average 41 cents per kilowatt hour price Hawaiian customers pay, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Source: Associated Press | By Adam Beam

“Only at PG&E would (Poppe’s) attempts at brand rehabilitation be considered a ‘safety message,’” said Mark Toney, executive director of the Utility Reform Network. “This blatant misuse of ratepayer funds is exactly why we need SB 938 and its clear rules and required disclosures for advertising costs.”

California lawmakers on Monday rejected a proposal aimed at cracking down on how some of the nation’s largest utilities spend customers’ money. California’s investor-owned utilities can’t use money from customers to pay for things like advertising their brand or lobbying for legislation. Instead, they’re supposed to use money from private investors to pay for those things.

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: 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: San Francisco Chronicle | By Julie Johnson

Mark Toney, executive director of ratepayer advocate nonprofit The Utility Reform Network, criticized commissioners for voting on the rate hike without discussion. “The commission owes an explanation to customers whenever they adopt a rate increase but now more than ever,” he said.

The $4.68 per month estimated increase for average households will last for a period of 12 months starting in April. But bills could climb even higher this year if the commission takes up another proposal from PG&E that would add $14 to $15 per month for average residential customers to recoup costs incurred during last year’s winter storms. Combining that with the January hike and Thursday’s decision, typical residential bills could become at least $53 higher per month than prices last year.

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: 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: 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.