{"id":154948,"date":"2026-01-29T14:11:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T14:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/154948\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T14:11:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T14:11:07","slug":"can-candidate-tom-steyer-slash-california-power-bills-by-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/154948\/","title":{"rendered":"Can candidate Tom Steyer slash California power bills by 25%?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeanne Kuang<\/a>, CalMatters<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 2026, and \u201clowering utilities bills\u201d is the new \u201chousing affordability\u201d for Democratic politicians.<\/p>\n

In the governor\u2019s race, self-funded billionaire candidate Tom Steyer is declaring he\u2019ll reduce electricity bills by 25%. The environmentalist investor has featured the head-turning figure in ads promising that he\u2019ll \u201cintroduce competition\u201d to the electricity market.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to take on these electric monopolies,\u201d he says in the ads. \u201cIf we break up these monopolistic power utilities, we\u2019ll drive down costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The TV and digital ads are tailored to feature each of the three major investor-owned utilities serving the region where the ads are airing: Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tackling electricity costs is a potent political issue with a populist message in a state with the second-highest power bills in the country. Electricity rates for the state\u2019s three large investor-owned utilities \u2014 which serve the majority of California customers\u00a0\u2014 rose between 48% and 67% between 2019 and 2023. That\u2019s in large part because of the state\u2019s increasingly destructive wildfires, some sparked by power lines, have prompted utilities to spend big on infrastructure improvements and raised liability costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

California Environmental Voters, an advocacy group, released a poll this week<\/a> that found 71% of surveyed likely voters prioritize controlling gas and electric bills. (Steyer, in the same poll, was supported by 8% of likely voters \u2014 behind Democrats Katie Porter and Eric Swalwell, and Republicans Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe monopoly is part of the reason this issue has become so fever-pitched for communities, because they don\u2019t have a choice,\u201d said the group\u2019s chief executive officer, Mary Creasman. \u201cI think Mr. Steyer is seeing all of the polling we\u2019re seeing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But despite saying so in his own ads, Steyer told reporters during a press conference this month that he\u2019s not actually arguing for \u201cbreaking up\u201d PG&E or having cities split off into their own municipal utilities, as San Francisco is considering.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Steyer, who is on leave from the investment firm he founded to fund clean energy projects, wants to force utility companies to choose cheaper ways of wildfire-proofing their infrastructure and give customers other options for buying power, including making it easier to build neighborhood-level solar projects or allowing more communities to operate their own local grids.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s a foolhardy promise\u2019<\/p>\n

So far, consumer advocates aren\u2019t clamoring to get on board. Many said they\u2019re waiting for Steyer or other candidates to release more detailed plans. Some are skeptical: Talk of \u201cbreaking up\u201d utilities raises the specter of bad actors manipulating prices during the state\u2019s early 2000s energy crisis. Utilities experts, meanwhile, warn that increased retail competition \u2014 one of Steyer\u2019s main goals \u2014 wouldn\u2019t target the bulk of customers’ bills, which come from distributing the power on utility-owned lines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re happy to see all of them taking this issue seriously,\u201d said Mark Toney, executive director of the consumer advocacy group The Utility Reform Network. \u201cBut a soundbite is not a proposal \u2026 It\u2019s difficult to (lower rates) in one fell swoop, I will tell you that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garry South, a Democratic strategist, said it\u2019s hard to trust a candidate who says the government can lower power bills. South worked for Gray Davis, the former governor who was famously recalled from office the last time the state tried to break up its utility monopolies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

California\u2019s electricity deregulation project of the 1990s led out-of-state companies to buy up power plants from utilities that were forced to divest them, manipulate the supply of electricity and jack up wholesale prices. The ensuing rolling blackouts cost the state billions of dollars in economic damage and Davis his political career, even though the market restructuring began years before his term.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen this movie before,\u201d South said. \u201cIt\u2019s a foolhardy promise for any candidate to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

But rates have risen so dramatically in recent years the issue could end up front and center in the governor\u2019s race. Energy costs already played a role in Democratic victories nationally last year, with new Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger focusing on the issue in several ads. At a climate-focused gubernatorial forum hosted by the California Environmental Voters on Wednesday, Steyer and fellow Democrats Katie Porter, Eric Swalwell and Xavier Becerra all said energy should be more affordable; Becerra floated freezing utility rates if he becomes governor.<\/p>\n

The issue gives politicians a chance to tout their affordability bonafides, while nodding to the climate change-driven natural disasters that are partly responsible for higher bills. For California Democrats specifically, lowering rates is key to maintaining the state\u2019s climate goals and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by electrifying cars and appliances. And the high costs come amid anxiety about the potential effects of artificial intelligence data centers on power bills. Some state lawmakers this year are introducing bills that would require the centers to be charged higher rates.<\/p>\n

In response to criticism from advocates and experts, Steyer\u2019s spokesman Kevin Liao pointed to an op-ed Steyer authored<\/a> outlining his goals and said he\u2019s proposed more specifics than other candidates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTom Steyer is the only candidate for governor who\u2019s put forward a detailed vision for busting the utility monopolies to deliver real savings for Californians struggling with high utility bills,\u201d Liao said.<\/p>\n

More choices, more renewables<\/p>\n

Steyer says there are some ways to force the major investor-owned utilities to lower rates: by giving customers more options of who to buy power from; hooking up new renewable generation sources to the grid faster; and, with the advent of better solar and battery technology, allowing more power to be bought and sold at the neighborhood level.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of flat roofs in this state and those flat roofs can do solar,\u201d he said at a press conference this month. \u201cIt\u2019s not some small thing \u2026 People owning roofs are going to charge people for electricity, and do it dramatically cheaper than monopoly electricity providers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some experts said retail competition could prompt utilities to be more consumer friendly, but most aren\u2019t convinced it will make a big difference in the bills.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat just isn\u2019t a big part of the bill in California,\u201d said Severin Borenstein, an energy economist at UC Berkeley.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most expensive part of getting electricity isn\u2019t the power itself, but the long-distance transmission and local distribution lines that deliver it to each home or business. Customers who buy power from a source other than the investor-owned utilities, as residents in a few dozen cities do through local, nonprofit buying collectives called Community Choice Aggregators, still must pay a utility for transmitting the electricity to them through the utility\u2019s lines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of the nearly 40 cents-per-kilowatt-hour charged to the average Californian who uses electricity from one of the three major private utilities, \u201cthe amount that\u2019s up for competition is probably in the range of 12 to 15 cents,\u201d Borenstein said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Borenstein said though proposals for residents and business owners to generate and sell power locally could improve energy reliability, he\u2019s concerned they could also just shift the fixed costs of wildfire improvements and maintaining power lines onto other users.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He pointed to one consequence of more widespread adoption of rooftop solar panels: Under a state program, utilities give customers with solar panels \u2014 typically higher-income homeowners \u2014 credits for the power they generate, but because those customers also buy less electricity, utilities recoup less of the fixed distribution costs through their bills. That leaves utilities to raise rates for customers without solar panels to make more of that money back.\u00a0<\/p>\n

State regulators in 2023 lowered the rooftop solar credit for new panels, but reports indicate the program is still a factor in high rates. Last year the California Chamber of Commerce and the environmental group National Resources Defense Council found in separate<\/a> reports<\/a> that the solar \u201ccost shift\u201d accounts for 14% to 16% of current electricity bills.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can sell power within your neighborhood, but somebody\u2019s still got to pay for the grid,\u201d Borenstein said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Deadly wildfires push rates higher<\/p>\n

By far the biggest driver of rising electricity rates in California is the enormous cost of wildfire-proofing utility infrastructure, liability for past fires and insurance for future fires. Most consumer advocates say that\u2019s where they\u2019d like to see the state tackle rates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The investor-owned utilities have been undergoing projects to make their infrastructure safer, including putting power lines underground, which can cost between $2 million and $6 million per mile<\/a>. As with other investments, the utilities are allowed to profit<\/a> from those projects, using higher rates to give shareholders a return on the capital investments. It\u2019s an arrangement critics including Steyer say provide an incentive for utilities to choose the costliest improvements.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Steyer says as governor he would appoint state regulators to the Public Utilities Commission who would push utilities to consider cheaper options, such as covering up existing power lines to make them less prone to sparking fires, rather than burying them underground, and focus their efforts on safety and maintenance. <\/p>\n

Swalwell also said Wednesday that he would scrutinize costly infrastructure spending. But neither has said how they would want regulators to change the profit incentives. Last year, the commission voted to keep utility profit margins<\/a> near 10%, ignoring advocates\u2019 calls to cut them to 6%, a decision Steyer criticized.<\/p>\n

California lawmakers have also begun to consider whether wildfire-proofing costs can be borne by the public instead. Last year Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law<\/a> allowing some state financing of utility infrastructure projects, which could lower some costs and also couldn\u2019t be used to raise customer rates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Britt Marra, executive director of the Small Business Utilities Advocates, another consumer group, said she wants candidates for governor to scrutinize utility infrastructure spending. Her group supports public financing.<\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornia is facing a lot of wildfire mitigation and costs to make a reliable, safe grid,\u201d she said. \u201cFiguring out how to make those investments in a way that doesn\u2019t drive our bills up is how we have to look at things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Small business owners are especially squeezed by high rates, Marra said, because they are charged more than residential customers and often operate on fixed schedules, so they can\u2019t shift their electricity usage during the day to off-peak hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really excited utility affordability is becoming a part of mainstream conversation in the upcoming election,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re still waiting to see a clear plan of how that 25% is actually going to be reduced.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jeanne Kuang, CalMatters This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. It\u2019s 2026,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,6774,76068,47,3604,25299],"class_list":{"0":"post-154948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-energy","12":"tag-governor-race-2026","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-pge","15":"tag-tom-steyer"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}