PG&E Reaches General Rate Case Settlement to Strengthen Safety, Reduce Wildfire Risk
December 20 2019 - 5:25PM
Business Wire
Joint Agreement with Customer Advocacy, Labor,
and Safety Groups Affirms PG&E’s Commitment to Deliver Safe and
Reliable Energy Including Hardening Grid to Help Keep Customers
Safe
Underscoring the company’s commitment to reducing wildfire risk,
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E or the Utility) has
reached a crucial milestone in its 2020 General Rate Case (GRC),
which funds a series of important additional safety investments to
help protect the 16 million people PG&E serves.
In a settlement agreement with the Public Advocates Office of
the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), The Utility
Reform Network, Coalition of California Utility Employees, Office
of the Safety Advocate of the CPUC, National Diversity Coalition,
Center for Accessible Technology, Small Business Utility Advocates,
and California City-County Street Light Association, the parties
agree that the CPUC should approve funding for PG&E’s ongoing
wildfire prevention efforts, risk monitoring, emergency response,
increased vegetation management, hardening of PG&E’s electric
system, and other new and enhanced safety measures to further
reduce wildfire risk. The GRC settlement agreement also includes
funding for electric and gas distribution safety and reliability
and power generation.
The settlement was filed today with the CPUC.
“These efforts support PG&E’s most important responsibility,
which is the safety of our customers and the communities we serve,”
said PG&E Utility CEO and President Andy Vesey. “This agreement
furthers our commitment to deliver safe and reliable energy to our
customers including making our system more resilient to the growing
threat of wildfires.”
Among the important wildfire safety investments in the GRC are
the following components of PG&E’s Community Wildfire Safety
Program:
- Installing stronger and more resilient poles and covered power
lines in the highest fire-threat areas;
- Increasing ongoing work to keep power lines clear of branches
from an estimated 120 million trees with the potential to grow or
fall into overhead power lines, including annual vegetation
inspection of approximately 81,000 miles of high-voltage electric
distribution lines;
- Implementing SmartMeter™ technology to more quickly identify
and respond to fallen power lines;
- Expanding the network of weather stations to enhance weather
forecasting and modeling by adding 1,300 new weather stations in
high fire-risk areas by 2022; and
- Installing nearly 600 new high-definition cameras in high
fire-threat areas, increasing coverage across these areas to more
than 90 percent.
The settlement agreement also calls for further investing in
technologies and strategies that minimize the impacts of Public
Safety Power Shutoffs, among the tools PG&E uses to reduce the
risks of wildfire.
While the GRC will help fund a series of important safety
investments, it will not fund potential claims resulting from the
2017 and 2018 Northern California wildfires. It also will not fund
any PG&E Corporation or Utility officer compensation.
Customer Bills
If the CPUC approves the settlement agreement, the average
monthly bill for a typical residential electric and gas customer
would increase by $5.69 a month, or 3.4 percent. This includes
$4.90 for electric and $0.79 for gas service. The resulting rate
change would occur in 2020 following the CPUC’s decision and revise
rates through 2022.
“PG&E’s commitment is to keep customer bills as low as
possible while meeting our responsibilities to safely serve our
customers, even as our changing climate presents significant new
challenges and risks,” Vesey said.
Next Steps
The settlement agreement will be reviewed by the assigned
administrative law judges, and other parties will have an
opportunity to provide comments before a final CPUC decision is
issued in 2020.
Cautionary Statement Concerning Forward-looking
Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that are
not historical facts, including statements about the beliefs,
expectations, estimates, future plans and strategies of PG&E
Corporation and the Utility. These statements are based on current
expectations and assumptions, which management believes are
reasonable, and on information currently available to management,
but are necessarily subject to various risks and uncertainties. In
addition to the risk that these assumptions prove to be inaccurate,
factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from
those contemplated by the forward-looking statements include
factors disclosed in PG&E Corporation and the Utility’s joint
Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018,
their joint Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the quarters ended
March 31, 2019, June 30, 2019 and September 30, 2019, and their
subsequent reports filed with the Securities and Exchange
Commission. Additional factors include, but are not limited to,
those associated with the voluntary cases commenced by each of
PG&E Corporation and the Utility under Chapter 11 on January
29, 2019. PG&E Corporation and the Utility undertake no
obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking
statements, whether due to new information, future events or
otherwise, except to the extent required by law.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E
Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas
and electric energy company in the United States. Based in San
Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers
some of the nation’s cleanest energy to 16 million people in
Northern and Central California. For more information, visit
www.pge.com/ and http://www.pge.com/about/newsroom/.
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