San Francisco Inches Closer to PG&E Acquisition

Daniel Robelo, a communications and digital organizer with Reclaim Our Power, a campaign fighting for a community- and worker-owned energy system in California, said “a victory in San Francisco” would be a positive sign for the state’s future.

“Energy is a public good,” Robelo said. “Ultimately, the whole state, not just San Francisco, needs to break up with PG&E and build a new utility that puts people and the planet over corporate profits.”

PG&E is the state’s largest investor-owned utility and has faced years of criticism over its role in deadly wildfires and aging infrastructure. Calls for the city to separate from the utility intensified after a fire at a PG&E substation in the Mission District sparked a major outage in December.

The city has said leaving the utility will save residents millions — savings that will come from San Francisco having access to cheaper loans for infrastructure and not having to pay shareholder dividends, corporate taxes or executive bonuses.

In a statement, PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo said its electric grid assets are not for sale, and a takeover “would be so expensive that it would raise San Franciscans’ electric rates for decades.”

Paulo also called the report “deficient” and said that “the project that the City described in the [report] appears to be inconsistent with the project that it described” to the California Public Utilities Commission, the state’s utility regulator.

If San Francisco did purchase the city’s local electric grid from PG&E, it would need to physically separate the wires and substations that serve the city from the ones serving the rest of PG&E’s territory. This construction would largely take place along the San Francisco-San Mateo border.

The 56-page environmental review includes measures to reduce emissions and noise pollution during construction and plans to avoid disturbing historic, archeological and paleontological sites. It also details protections for the northwestern pond turtle, butterflies, nesting birds, roosting bats and emerging wetlands.

San Francisco said it has asked the CPUC to determine the fair market value of PG&E’s electric assets, after the city provided its valuation of $3.4 billion in April. PG&E is due to respond in October.

KQED’s Laura Klivans contributed to this story.