Californians’ energy bills will be higher in 2024.
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Starting Monday, most households’ gas and electric bills will increase about 13%, or $34.50, according to a PG&E press release Friday. The increase comes as the company’s General Rate Case from November goes into effect in the new year.
Most of the costs related to the increase come from efforts to reduce the risk of events such as gas leaks and wildfires, the company said. These include undergrounding 1,230 miles of power lines in wildfire-prone areas and installing new technology to detect gas leaks.
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“The investments we plan in 2024 and beyond focus on three goals: Keeping our energy system safe and reliable for our customers, meeting growing energy demand and adding even more renewables to our energy mix,” Carla Peterman, PG&E executive vice president of corporate affairs, said in the press release. “At the same time, we’re aggressively focused on finding new ways to work so that we can keep future bill increases at or below a broader, long-term inflation rate of 2% to 4%.”
PG&E first brought a proposal for the rate increase to California’s Public Utilities Commission in June 2021. CPUC approved a 12.8% increase in November, down from PG&E’s requested hike of 17.9%.
The GRC that goes into effect Monday will increase customers’ bills by an average of 3.6% over the next three years, according to PG&E’s press release. This upcoming increase follows a year of higher utility bill costs, including a spike from last February that sent customers’ bills shooting up about $79 per month amid colder-than-usual temperatures.