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Providing safe, reliable, and clean energy is our most important responsibility. Providing this energy at a price everyone can afford is just as important.
Rate increases and changes in your rates and bills can be challenging. This information is intended to help answer questions about your energy costs.
We are taking steps to manage our costs and make our energy service safer, cleaner, more reliable, and more affordable.
We're committed to managing costs for our customers by:
We're issuing the state's Climate Credit in April and October which is part of California's efforts to fight climate change.
We're here to help you manage your energy use and costs. We provide resources including rate options, tools, and rebates to help you lower your energy usage and your monthly energy bill.
We offer our customer rate plan choices, payment options, energy efficiency financing and energy management tools.
We have issued credits totaling $341 million to 350,000 PG&E customers from the state's California Arrearage Payment Program (CAPP) to help reduce past-due energy bill balances that increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We're also working with our partners on other ways to lower our customers' energy costs, like:
Energy bills can go up or down for a variety of reasons. Many are beyond your control, like the weather, state regulations and commodity prices — the cost of purchasing gas and electricity is passed directly to our customers without any mark-up.
PG&E does not make more money when our customers use more gas or electricity. This is called decoupling. PG&E has no reason to encourage customers to use more energy because our profits do not come from the energy we sell. PG&E earns a profit on:
There are a few things you can control that may affect your bill, such as:
The market price of natural gas continues to be higher around the world, causing higher bills for many customers. We buy and store gas at the lowest possible price from several sources. If the cost ever goes lower than what we paid, we pass on savings to you.
Natural gas
Electricity
We rely on a broad variety of electricity resources including natural gas, renewables like solar and wind, hydroelectric and nuclear power. This way, we are not dependent on one source of electricity.
PG&E gas and electric rates can change several times each year and increased overall in 2022. These increases were approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which regulates utilities like PG&E. These changes included increases in the cost of purchasing gas and electricity and maintaining PG&E's pipes and wires.
The money from these rate increases allows PG&E to fund critical investments and programs for customers that:
The price of energy and all rates paid by customers are regulated and approved by public agencies including the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).
Utilities like PG&E must determine the revenue they need to serve customers safely and reliably and then propose what rate should be charged to recover that money from customers. Rates are set in formal proceedings that are open, transparent, and encourage public participation and comment.
When PG&E needs to make any rate change, we submit an application to the CPUC. The application describes the upgrade required or a new program or service, along with the annual or multi-year costs and impact on rates.
PG&E files every four years for the CPUC to review and authorize revenues collected for certain electric generation and distribution and natural gas transmission, storage and distribution operations costs.
That process is called the General Rate Case for electric and gas. In addition to the CPUC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approves the retail electric transmission portion of rates.
Weather and climate play a role in determining your bill. Energy usage is generally higher in warmer climates in the summer and in colder climates in the winter leading to seasonally higher bills.
Customers receive a baseline allowance or allotment of energy available at the lowest price, based on where they live, their heating source and the season (summer or winter).
Customers living in hotter areas receive more electricity at the lowest rate due to home and business-cooling needs, and customers living in colder winter climates receive more gas at the lowest rate for their heating needs. PG&E provides many programs and tips to help customers mitigate higher bills due to climate.
PG&E is investing in new technologies and modernizing the electric and gas systems so that our transition to clean energy can be safe, reliable, and affordable.
The money you pay:
The threat of extreme weather and wildfires is real. PG&E's Community Wildfire Safety Program helps protect our communities from the risk of wildfires 365 days a year.
Keeping Californians safe is our most important responsibility, and we will continue to invest in our electric grid now and in the future, so that when extreme weather happens, we are ready for it.
California is leading the way to a cleaner energy future. Over 93% of our power is already greenhouse-gas-free.
California is the fifth largest economy in the world and a state of innovators and changemakers.
We're working with the world’s leading car manufacturers on an innovative program that will enable electric vehicles to become portable power plants for homes and businesses when the power is out.
Preparing the grid for new electric demand to support the growing and dynamic energy needs and desires of our customers, while helping our state reach its climate and clean energy goals.
To provide you with reliable electric service, we are:
To serve our 4.6 million natural gas customers safely and reliably, we:
In 2020—the 40-year anniversary of our Supplier Diversity Program—we invested $3.88 billion with diverse suppliers.
Our overall supplier diversity goal is 40% including 25% with minority-owned businesses through 2023.
As one of the largest employers in California with more than 24,000 employees working and living in your communities, we have a responsibility to help everyone thrive and prosper.