Days after emerging from criminal probation for its felony convictions stemming from a 2010 natural gas explosion that killed eight people, Pacific Gas & Electric was issued a safety certificate by the California Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety.
The certificate paves the way for the utility to recover from ratepayers or the state’s wildfire fund costs related to a 2021 wildfire.
The state office, which was created last year, said that although PG&E “has additional work to complete,” the utility is “taking steps to improve its operations and culture.” The office said the utility’s progress had been documented through the safety certification process.
The office said that the safety certification does not affirm that PG&E has taken “all possible steps” to prevent its equipment from causing wildfires. And it said the certificate does not shield PG&E from liability or litigation. Instead, the safety certification, which is valid for 12 months, allows the utility to seek to recover catastrophic wildfire costs from its ratepayers, or from the California Wildfire Fund.
The Energy Safety office was created in July 2021, the same month that a damaged PG&E power line triggered the Dixie Fire, the second largest wildfire in state history. The fire burned almost 1 million acres and leveled the town of Greenville. Cal Fire investigators determined earlier this year that the cause of the Dixie Fire was a tree making contact with PG&E power lines near Cresta Dam.
The safety certificate was met with criticism by at least one environmental advocacy group. “It is hard to conceive of a more offensive response to PG&E’s repeated misdeeds than granting a ‘safety certificate’ after the carnage this company has inflicted on countless families, their property and swaths of California’s landscape over just the past few years,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group.
Taking steps
In late January, the utility relaunched its wildfire safety operations center as the Hazard Awareness & Warning Center (HAWC). It said that through 2021 it had:
- Improved the Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) program for customers and communities, using advanced weather forecasting technology and nearly 300 new sectionalizing devices, to impact 16,078 customers on average per outage in 2021, down from 108,843 customers impacted on average in 2020 and 287,770 customers impacted on average in 2019
- Launched an initiative to underground 10,000 miles of distribution powerlines in and near high fire-threat areas and hardened more than 200 distribution circuit miles to increase system resiliency
- Met and exceeded state vegetation safety standards across more than 1,900 miles in areas with the highest wildfire risk to manage trees that posed a risk to electric distribution powerlines and equipment
- Adjusted circuit settings to increase the speed at which safety devices turn off power in response to faults, known as Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings (EPSS), resulting in the California Public Utilities Commission Reportable ignition rate being reduced by nearly 80% as compared to the three-year average for EPSS-enabled circuits.
In a related move, the utility offered to remove for customers, at no charge, large-diameter wood from trees that were cut down for safety during the company’s 2021 wildfire response.
Leadership
The Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety is under the leadership of Caroline Thomas Jacobs, who was appointed to the role last June by Governor Gavin Newsom. She previously was director of the Wildfire Safety Division within the California Public Utilities Commission. There, she was responsible for standing up the new Division and implementing oversight of electrical corporations’ wildfire safety under various state statutes.
Earlier, she was Chief of Headquarters Response Operations for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services where she was responsible for leading the California State Warning Center and State Operations Center during the wildfires and other disasters experienced since 2017, including establishing the initial response framework for Public Safety Power Shutoffs.
A continuing menace?
In January, PG&E emerged from five years of criminal probation, despite worries that nation’s largest utility remains too dangerous to trust after years of devastation from wildfires ignited by its outdated equipment and neglectful management.
The probation was supposed to rehabilitate PG&E after its 2016 conviction for six felony crimes from a 2010 explosion triggered by its natural gas lines that blew up a San Bruno neighborhood and killed eight people.
Since 2017 the utility has been blamed for more than 30 wildfires that wiped out more than 23,000 homes and businesses and killed more than 100 people.
“In these five years, PG&E has gone on a crime spree and will emerge from probation as a continuing menace to California,” U.S. District Judge William Alsup wrote in a report reviewing his oversight of the utility.
While on probation, PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter for a 2018 wildfire that wiped out the town of Paradise, about 170 miles (275 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco. PG&E faces more criminal charges in two separate cases, for a Sonoma County wildfire in 2019 and a Shasta County fire in 2020. PG&E has denied any criminal wrongdoing in those fires.
During its probation, PG&E also sought bankruptcy protection for the second time in less than 20 years. Before emerging from Chapter 11 reorganization in 202, PG&E reached settlements of more than $25.5 billion, including $13.5 billion earmarked for wildfire victims that may fall short of doling out the amount initially promised.
