SAN FRANCISCO – California’s electricity suppliers are facing more scrutiny since former California Public Utilities Commission president Loretta Lynch said that the state may need to take over their investor-owned utilities in an article in the Los Angeles Times.
A string of utility-sparked wildfires have killed a number of Californians and destroyed billions in property. Nevertheless, one of southern California’s largest electricity providers is continuing to set its sights on making infrastructure improvements.
“Southern California Edison is continuing to work on behalf of its customers, mitigating wildfire risk by further hardening our infrastructure, bolstering situational awareness and enhancing our operation practices,” the company said in a statement.
This comes in wake of the state’s four investor-owned energy providers facing billions of dollars' worth of lawsuits following several years of devastating fires throughout the state. In some cases, PG&E’s utility equipment has been linked to the incidents that sparked the heinous wildfires and the company just lost its bid before a bankruptcy judge to avoid strict liability for some of those recent wildfires. It has continued to disregard any notion of a state takeover.
Now the state’s other three electricity providers – Southern California Edison, PacifiCorp's Pacific Power, and Sempra Energy's San Diego Gas & Electric – also find themselves in question with a similar stance on their futures.
Southern California Edison is the largest subsidiary of Edison International and the primary electricity supply company for a majority of Southern California. It provides 14 million people with electricity across a service territory of approximately 50,000 square miles.
During the 2019 wildfire season, more than 6,872 fires have been recorded, according to CalFire and the U.S. Forest Service, totaling an estimated of 253,321 acres of burned land as of Nov. 24.
Last week, PG&E announced a $13.5 billion settlement for the victims of number of devastating Northern California wildfires that wiped out thousands of homes and businesses.