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Dive Brief:
California regulators on Thursday voted to approve a financing order giving Pacific Gas & Electric Co. the official go-ahead to securitize $7.5 billion in costs related to wildfires caused by its power lines in 2017.
The securitization would pave the way for PG&E to retire about $6 billion in debt and accelerate final payments to victims of the wildfires, the utility said in its application to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). But consumer advocates, who have raised concerns about the proposal’s impact on ratepayers, are in the process of challenging it.
Regulators usually allow utilities to securitize costs only if the costs are supposed to be the responsibility of ratepayers, said Tom Long, legal director with The Utility Reform Network, “but this one is unique … because this is to securitize costs that are supposed to be paid solely by shareholders.”
Dive Brief:
Regulators in California have teed up two proposals which, if approved over the next couple of months, would allow Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) to securitize $7.5 billion of costs stemming from the claims it faces for a series of wildfires in 2017.
PG&E last year asked the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for permission to recover the $7.5 billion by issuing ratepayer-backed recovery bonds under the stress test process. That process was adopted by lawmakers in September 2018, before the company filed for bankruptcy.
PG&E sees multiple benefits to securitizing that $7.5 billion it could retire around $6 billion in debt that was used to pay wildfire claims, and speed up payments to wildfire victims as per its bankruptcy reorganization plan, it said in its application.
Dive Brief:
The California Public Utilities Commission s (CPUC) wildfire safety division last week issued a 2020 safety certification for Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), despite raising multiple concerns about the utility s operations and fire mitigation processes.
These concerns include problems identified during field inspections, reports from PG&E s court-appointed federal monitor, as well as the investigation into the utility s potential role in sparking last September s Zogg Fire, which led to four fatalities and destroyed 204 structures.
The safety certification, which is valid for 12 months, provides utilities with an easier burden of proof test to recover costs related to catastrophic wildfires from the state s wildfire insurance fund, created in 2019 by Assembly Bill 1054.