PLMA: Load Management Dialogues

10/24/2023 HOT TOPIC: How It Started vs How Its Going - California's Journey With Income Graduated Fixed Charges

PLMA Season 5 Episode 11

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0:00 | 56:43

California is in the middle of a regulatory proceeding to lower volumetric electricity rates and replace the revenue with income-graduated fixed charges. The idea was inspired in part by a 2021 UC Berkeley Energy Institute study that found the current rate structures of the investor-owned utilities have rates that are at least double the utility's avoided cost. A successor study released in 2022 found that the current rate structure places a disproportionate burden of paying for fixed costs and climate policies on low-income households, and that the high rates are likely to undermine efforts to decarbonize homes and personal transportation. Income-graduated fixed charges are not the only way to address these problems, but they are the route that the California legislature has chosen. 

Learn more about California's journey with income-graduated fixed charges, presented by  Severin Borenstein, Faculty Director of the Energy Institute at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.