San Francisco seeks breakaway from PG&E to create public utility

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — The city by the Bay has a bad relationship with PG&E and is looking to break up.

State Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat representing San Francisco in the Legislature, hammered the investor-owned utility Monday morning on the steps of City Hall. He said a series of blackouts in December and rates that are double that of other areas illustrate the need for a public utility to serve the city of some 827,000 residents.

“We are fed up with PG&E,” Wiener said. “We are done. It is time for San Francisco to break up with PG&E.”

The means of breaking up is Senate Bill 875. Currently a placeholder bill introduced in January, a more robust version of the legislation is expected Monday night. Wiener anticipated the bill would reach its first policy committee by early April, though no schedule is set.

It’s not the first time Wiener has tried to move the meter on PG&E. In 2020, he had a bill that would have made all of PG&E publicly owned. His current legislation is different, as Wiener said it would remove “poison pills” in existing law that make it almost impossible for a city to buy a utility’s assets.

“This will create a fair process for eminent domain, as it was for many, many years,” Wiener said.

The city’s tried before to break away from the utility. Wiener’s office said it started the process in 2019. It followed up in 2021, filing a petition with the California Public Utilities Commission that sought to determine the valuation of PG&E’s electric distribution system.

Wiener said the process should have taken no longer than 18 months. It remains ongoing, though a judge recently spelled out the process for the next year.

“We have had enough of the delays,” he said, adding: “Let’s end the monopoly. Let’s allow San Francisco to break up with PG&E.”

Several of the city’s supervisors stood with Wiener, including Mayor Rafael Mandelman. The mayor said he’d issue a resolution Tuesday in support of the legislation.

Like the state senator, Mandelman pointed to cities like Palo Alto and Sacramento that have public utilities he said provide cheaper electricity.

Supervisor Bilal Mahmood listed a series of missteps he said PG&E made in the aftermath of a December substation fire.

The fire in the days before Christmas left some 130,000 customers without power at its height.

“Their answers bordered on comedy,” Mahmood said of the utility’s response.

According to Mahmood, PG&E waited two hours to tell the city about the substation fire. It also relied on a computer system to provide updates to people, which often gave wrong information.

Additionally, the same substation had caught fire twice before over the past 30 years, Mahmood added.

“The reality is, they never fix the problems they are causing,” Supervisor Matt Dorsey said. “It’s time for San Francisco to municipalize this.”

Dorsey also pointed to what he called PG&E’s terrible safety record for wildfires. He referenced the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise.

The utility pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the Camp Fire, which stemmed from its poorly maintained infrastructure.  

In a statement to Courthouse News, PG&E said a takeover of part of its grid would not reduce customer bills. The utility added that San Francisco has greatly undervalued the assets it seeks to take over.

The city has claimed the assets are worth between $2 billion and $3 billion. But PG&E said San Francisco would not only have to buy the assets, but also pay the cost of rebuilding its system after a separation. That would drive up customer costs.

“At PG&E, we’re focused on real solutions for driving down costs,” the utility said. “In January 2026, PG&E dropped prices for the fourth time in two years. Residential electric prices are now 11% lower than they were in January 2024.

“By working smarter and modernizing our processes, we’ve also reduced costs for customers by $3.5 billion over four years, enabling us to do more work for customers and use the savings to help offset the costs of some of that work,” it added.