PG&E wants to raise rates again. Why CA bills shouldn’t change much

Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s latest filing with California regulators requests an 8% increase in revenue beginning in 2027. The company said it’s their lowest in a decade.

Chief Executive Officer Patti Poppe said the General Rate Case, filed every four years to the California Public Utilities Commission, proves they’re “a turnaround story in the making.”

“It’s not the same old PG&E with ‘let’s just ask for more money’ and double-digit increases, and ‘we have to do what we have to do’,” said Poppe, who became CEO in 2021. “We want to do what we need to do at a lower cost.”

PG&E provides gas and electric service to roughly 16 million people in Central and Northern California.

The company in Thursday’s filing estimates the revenue request would increase current combined electricity and gas bills for non-subsidized customers by about $11 in 2027, and subsidized customers by about $7. However, it says the bills customers actually see will remain flat, or even go down, due to sunsetting costs, mainly having to do with wildfire prevention and mitigation.

“We’ve invested a lot, we’ve done a lot of work on the system. We’re finished paying for that,” said Poppe. “So those costs can come out of the bill.”

It’s not much of a boon to average non-subsidized customers who went from paying about $166 for their monthly combined gas and electric bill in 2018 to an average of $300 per month in 2025, according to documents PG&E filed with the CPUC.

“It’s a slight decrease from these inflated rates, but it still does very little to help customers experiencing, you know, an affordability crisis,” said Lee Trotman, communications director for TURN, The Utility Reform Network .

Trotman says PG&E overspent last year by double on vegetation management, and currently has 17 pending rate increases with the CPUC that are outside the General Rate Case.

PG&E spokeswoman Lynsey Paulo said she didn’t know how many rate increases are pending, but all pending applications are included in the projection that costs will still remain flat through 2027. After 2027, if PG&E gets their entire proposal adopted, average monthly costs are expected to increase about 3.4% per year, or $9 on average, through 2030, not including costs that may come out of the bill.

The filing of the General Rate Case is the first step in an 18-month regulatory process, and the public utilities commission rarely fully adopts PG&E’s proposal.

This story was originally published May 16, 2025 at 1:07 PM.