San Francisco cleared an important checkpoint last Thursday in its yearslong push to take control of the local electric grid from PG&E when the city’s planning commission approved a required environmental impact report, keeping alive an effort to bring more of the city’s power system under public ownership.<\/p>\n
A unanimous vote kept that effort moving, even though it did not finalize any transaction, according to KQED<\/a>.<\/p>\n What happened?<\/p>\n San Francisco’s planning commission approved the final report required before a possible purchase of PG&E’s electric grid assets in the city can go further.<\/p>\n The report must be completed before officials can make choices about whether to pursue a takeover.<\/p>\n Backers of the idea say cutting ties with the investor-owned utility could save residents millions of dollars. They argue the city could borrow more cheaply for infrastructure and avoid expenses tied to shareholder dividends, corporate taxes, and executive bonuses.<\/p>\n The push gained momentum after a December fire at a PG&E substation in the Mission District led to a major outage.<\/p>\n The utility has also faced years of criticism over aging infrastructure and its connection to deadly wildfires.<\/p>\n San Francisco has also asked the California Public Utilities Commission to determine the fair-market value of PG&E’s electric assets.<\/p>\n The city put that figure at $3.4 billion in April, and PG&E is expected to respond in October.<\/p>\n Why does it matter?<\/p>\n Who owns the electric grid can affect monthly utility bills, outage response, infrastructure upgrades, and safety planning.<\/p>\n San Francisco says public ownership could lower costs by cutting out certain investor-driven expenses.<\/p>\n Supporters also see local control as a way to better align maintenance and investment decisions with the city’s needs.<\/p>\n PG&E, however, rejects that case.<\/p>\n Lynsey Paulo, a PG&E spokesperson, said the company’s electric grid assets are not on the market and warned a takeover “would be so expensive that it would raise San Franciscans’ electric rates for decades.”<\/p>\n Californians are already grappling with high living costs, climate-fueled disaster risks, and concerns about grid reliability. A change this large could shape how quickly repairs, upgrades, and safety improvements happen in one of the state’s biggest cities.<\/p>\n What’s being done?<\/p>\n The city is moving through the formal process required to make a public power bid possible. Approval of the environmental impact report gives San Francisco a key piece of groundwork, but several major decisions still lay ahead.<\/p>\n The next step is the valuation fight before the CPUC. That process could determine whether the city’s financial case holds up and how expensive any acquisition would be.<\/p>\n If the city moves forward, officials say public ownership could open the door to infrastructure investment without the pressure to generate returns for shareholders.<\/p>\n City utility officials described the vote as a notable step forward.<\/p>\n “There is more work ahead, and there are future decisions to be made, but the final environmental impact report is a key step to expand public power,” Ron Flynn, deputy general manager and COO of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, said<\/a>.<\/p>\n Get TCD’s free newsletters<\/a> for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Francisco cleared an important checkpoint last Thursday in its yearslong push to take control of the local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[14047,94634,10175,3604,41265,161031,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-401054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-california-public-utilities-commission","tag-electric-grid","tag-environmental-impact-report","tag-pge","tag-planning-commission","tag-public-ownership","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401054","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=401054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}