Berkeley solar energy activists took offense to an online “love” letter last month to customers from PG&E CEO Patricia Poppe and responded with a Valentine of their own.
The sentiment of her message sparked a civil protest. Activists from the Solar Rights Alliance, an advocacy group for solar energy users, on Tuesday set up a table at the South Berkeley Farmers’ Market to offer people the chance to tell PG&E what they think in the context of an “un-Valentine”card. The group collected dozens of handmade cards, which they mailed to Poppe.
“From day one I said, ‘leading with love’ would be key to our transformation,” Poppe wrote in the Jan. 8 letter, referring to California’s energy transition away from fossil fuels.
“Energy use in California has been decreasing over the past 15 years because of advances in energy efficiency and solar adoption,” Poppe wrote. “However, because our rates are based on dividing total costs by the units of energy used, when customers overall use less energy, it means rates rise. And that unfortunately impacts our most financially vulnerable customers.”
“More than 90% of the rate hikes of the last decade are due to utility spending increases on poles and wires,” said Dave Rosenfeld of the Solar Rights Alliance. “When people use less energy, the utilities don’t have to build as many poles and wires. This saves all ratepayers, but it also eats into utility profits.”
The CPUC’s Return on Equity policy allows a certain amount of profit each year based on new spending on transmission and distribution, said Rosenfeld.
“Utilities get a guaranteed 8% to 10% profit from every dollar they spend building new poles and wires, so they scapegoat people who use less energy through conservation or rooftop solar,” he said.
In 2023, PG&E announced a 2023-2026 General Rate Case, which explained their planned rates for the near future. The California Public Utilities Commission approved the rates that same year. It specified a 12.8% increase in 2024, a 1.6% increase in 2025 and a decrease by 2.8% in 2026. Have they stuck to the rate hike schedule?
“You have to remember that only 50% of the bills are decided in a general rate case,” said Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group.
Toney said the original purpose of having the general rate case was to have all the revenue requirements, all of the money that the company would collect, decided in one big case.
“But now there are so many other rate cases. Energy efficiency is separate. Wildfire spending is separate. Diablo Canyon is separate. And there’s a big, long list of things that are completely separate from the general rate case,” he said. “Electric vehicle charging stations. I mean, I can go on and on. This is what they’ve been approved. There were five other non-general rate case increases approved in 2024.”
“PG&E and the other utilities are asserting dominion over all electricity generated within their service areas with a right to charge the full retail rate even for power that is not delivered and not consumed by a customer. No other corporation makes such a bold claim.”
Richard McCann, M. Cubed
Toney said that part of the reason the rates are so high is because there are no limits to how much they can request; no limit to how many times a year they can ask for an increase; and there are no limits to how much of a rate increase the CPUC can grant. Whether the rates will decrease in 2026, he said, is a question of what the rate is compared to.
“That’s part of what we’re fighting for over with the Legislature. It may be a decrease from 2025, but it’s certainly an increase from where it started before the 12% increase in 2024,” he said.
Richard McCann is a policy analyst and cofounder of the nonprofit M. Cubed, which specializes in utility policy for local governments. He monitors how rates change over time and found that PG&E raised rates by 50% from 2022 to 2024. He said a decrease is unlikely for 2026, especially if PG&E gets its requested increase toward upgrade costs for the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.
“PG&E and the other utilities are asserting that rooftop solar customers are shirking their cost ‘responsibility’ because they are ‘departing’ the utility system,” McCann said. “The utilities are asserting dominion over all electricity generated within their service areas with a right to charge the full retail rate even for power that is not delivered and not consumed by a customer. No other corporation makes such a bold claim.”
Improvements to the power grid were mentioned in the online letter from Poppe, including the extension of operations for Diablo Canyon and adding more battery storage and renewables. She said that resulted in zero Flex Alerts or rolling blackouts last year, even during the hottest July on record and an extremely hot October.
“As for company practices, we’re teaching our workforce how to put you, the customer, first in decision making, and how to do that at a lower cost,” Poppe’s letter said. “That’s right, believe it or not, we want you to feel the love from PG&E every day.”
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