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Is California's PG&E The First Climate Change Bankruptcy? (marketscreener.com)
"California's largest power company intends to file for bankruptcy as it faces tens of billions of dollars in potential liability following massive wildfires that devastated parts of the state over the last two years," reports the Washington Post.
Calling it "a climate change casualty," one Forbes contributor notes that PG&E's stock has now lost 90% of its mid-October value after a giant November wildfire, adding that "Future investors will look back on these three months as a turning point, and wonder why the effects of climate change on the economic underpinnings to our society were not more widely recognized at the time." Climate scientists may equivocate about the degree to which Global Warming is contributing to these fires until more detailed research is complete, but for an investor who is used to making decisions based on incomplete or ambiguous information, the warning signs are flashing red... there is no doubt in my mind that Global Warming's thumb rests on the scale of PG&E's decision to declare bankruptcy.
And the Wall Street Journal is already describing it as "the first climate-change bankruptcy, probably not the last," noting that it was a prolonged drought that "dried out much of the state and decimated forests, dramatically increasing the risk of fire." "This is a fairly new development," said Bruce Usher, a professor at Columbia University's business school who teaches a course on climate and finance. "If you are not already considering extreme weather and other climatic events as one of many risk factors affecting business today, you are not doing your job"...
In less than a decade, PG&E, which serves 16 million customers, saw the risk of catastrophic wildfires multiply greatly in its vast service area, which stretches from the Oregon border south to Bakersfield. Weather patterns that had been typical for Southern California -- such as the hot, dry Santa Ana winds that sweep across the region in autumn, stoking fires -- were now appearing hundreds of miles to the north. "The Santa Ana fire condition is now a Northern California fire reality, " said Ken Pimlott, who retired last month as director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. "In a perfect world, we would like to see all [of PG&E's] equipment upgraded, all of the vegetation removed from their lines. But I don't know anybody overnight who is going to catch up." PG&E scrambled to reduce fire risks by shoring up power lines and trimming millions of trees. But the company's equipment kept setting fires -- about 1,550 between mid-2014 through 2017, or more than one a day, according to data it filed with the state.
The global business community is recognizing the risks it faces from climate change. This week, a World Economic Forum survey of global business and thought leaders found extreme weather and other climate-related issues as top risks both by likelihood and impact.
Other factors besides climate change may also have pushed PG&E towards bankruptcy, according to the article. They're required by California state regulations to provide electrical service to the thousands of people moving into the state's forested areas, yet "an unusual California state law, known as 'inverse condemnation,' made PG&E liable if its equipment started a fire, regardless of whether it was negligent."
In declaring bankruptcy, PG&E cited an estimated $30 billion in liabilities -- plus 750 lawsuits from wildfires potentially caused by its power lines.
Calling it "a climate change casualty," one Forbes contributor notes that PG&E's stock has now lost 90% of its mid-October value after a giant November wildfire, adding that "Future investors will look back on these three months as a turning point, and wonder why the effects of climate change on the economic underpinnings to our society were not more widely recognized at the time." Climate scientists may equivocate about the degree to which Global Warming is contributing to these fires until more detailed research is complete, but for an investor who is used to making decisions based on incomplete or ambiguous information, the warning signs are flashing red... there is no doubt in my mind that Global Warming's thumb rests on the scale of PG&E's decision to declare bankruptcy.
And the Wall Street Journal is already describing it as "the first climate-change bankruptcy, probably not the last," noting that it was a prolonged drought that "dried out much of the state and decimated forests, dramatically increasing the risk of fire." "This is a fairly new development," said Bruce Usher, a professor at Columbia University's business school who teaches a course on climate and finance. "If you are not already considering extreme weather and other climatic events as one of many risk factors affecting business today, you are not doing your job"...
In less than a decade, PG&E, which serves 16 million customers, saw the risk of catastrophic wildfires multiply greatly in its vast service area, which stretches from the Oregon border south to Bakersfield. Weather patterns that had been typical for Southern California -- such as the hot, dry Santa Ana winds that sweep across the region in autumn, stoking fires -- were now appearing hundreds of miles to the north. "The Santa Ana fire condition is now a Northern California fire reality, " said Ken Pimlott, who retired last month as director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. "In a perfect world, we would like to see all [of PG&E's] equipment upgraded, all of the vegetation removed from their lines. But I don't know anybody overnight who is going to catch up." PG&E scrambled to reduce fire risks by shoring up power lines and trimming millions of trees. But the company's equipment kept setting fires -- about 1,550 between mid-2014 through 2017, or more than one a day, according to data it filed with the state.
The global business community is recognizing the risks it faces from climate change. This week, a World Economic Forum survey of global business and thought leaders found extreme weather and other climate-related issues as top risks both by likelihood and impact.
Other factors besides climate change may also have pushed PG&E towards bankruptcy, according to the article. They're required by California state regulations to provide electrical service to the thousands of people moving into the state's forested areas, yet "an unusual California state law, known as 'inverse condemnation,' made PG&E liable if its equipment started a fire, regardless of whether it was negligent."
In declaring bankruptcy, PG&E cited an estimated $30 billion in liabilities -- plus 750 lawsuits from wildfires potentially caused by its power lines.
They neglected their infrastructure in a known fireprone area.. Now they are being fined/sued out of existance. Uh huh, yeah its climate change.
PG&E would not be liable for "Global Warming", the fact they are liable for damages is because they were the ones you irresponsibly cared for equipment and other things.
Nothing like using some mystical bogeyman to cast blame on and shift away from your own poor judgment and ability.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"PG&E scrambled to reduce fire risks by shoring up power lines and trimming millions of trees. But the company's equipment kept setting fires -- about 1,550 between mid-2014 through 2017, or more than one a day, according to data it filed with the state." and "In declaring bankruptcy, PG&E cited an estimated $30 billion in liabilities -- plus 750 lawsuits from wildfires potentially caused by its power lines."
Honestly, California's current streak of dryness and wildfires may be exacerbated by climate change, but clearly the fundamental problem is equipment which wasn't well designed to, you no, not set fires. I can sort of understand how this may be due to a legacy of lines and equipment where it was just expected that the dampness of the area would prevent combustion from occurring, but it's sort of hard to believe that they couldn't have fixed the vast majority of their problems long ago with a lot less than $30 billion in upgrades. It's not like California dryness is fundamentally new, so they should have been well ahead of the risk.
PG&E Files for Bankruptcy / $9 billion in debt, firm abandons bailout talks with state (2001)
Can't make a profit, can't drop unprofitable components of business, can't raise prices to meet costs... but somehow is expected to fully maintain thousands of miles of electrical equipment and wiring.
made PG&E liable if its equipment started a fire, regardless of whether it was negligent."
In that case, would not the wise company use equipment that did not start fires?
Is PG&E the only electric company on Earth who provides power in dry areas? No they are not. Lots of other companies seem manage this task just fine without countless fires sparked by electrical equipment.
Having the power company liable seems like a good idea, because any rational company would make extra sure crush clearing was done religiously, that equipment would not spark if at all possible.. despite that costing more.
California has some of the highest taxes in the U.S., what have the customers gained from it but pain and suffering?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If climate were going the other way, we'd be reading about how Senegal was caught red handed with insufficient snow removal equipment.
Many people dead from icy sidewalks in July.
And you still wouldn't blame global cooling: those darn Senegalese can't get a damn thing right.
Yeah but the time they blew up San Bruno was because of climate change
It was caused by not routine controlled burns. Building homes in high risk areas. Blaming climate is ignoring these factors.
They're required by California state regulations to provide electrical service to the thousands of people moving into the state's forested areas, yet "an unusual California state law, known as 'inverse condemnation,' made PG&E liable if its equipment started a fire, regardless of whether it was negligent."
Either that legal situation is going to change, or power bills are going to go up steeply (at least for people if forested areas, if it's legal to discriminate). Or no power company is going to buy up the company's infrastructure and there'll be no electricity for their customers.
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES AND PROPAGANDA NAZI FAGGOT KEN DOLL UNTIL YOU ARE BRUTALLY MURDERED
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
That he no longer realizes when he's lying. https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/17/pge-uninsulated-power-conductors-were-factors-in-fatal-wildfires-federal-judge/
Of California's fucked-in-the-head regulatory environment.
This has NOTHING to do with climate change.
They're basically required to service areas that will never be profitable, below their costs of delivery, can't spin off unprofitable business segments, they're not allowed to charge more to cover their costs, etc.
Meanwhile, state and federal regulations basically conspire against them. Changes in land management dramatically increase the chances of fire in any given area. And they're made liable for any fires in the area of their equipment, whether it was actually their equipment or not...meanwhile industry regulation basically prevents them from charging true cost of the power they deliver and actually making it MORE profitable to sell the power out of state and then re-import it...
Meanwhile, California's idiot density is going up year over year as people with an actual functional brain flee the state. They've had wildfires in California for HOW LONG? Yet, every year we've got idiots starting fires and moving into areas that abut to the aforementioned badly managed forested land and building WOOD HOUSES, while ignoring sensible rules for building in fire-prone areas. Then, after they've burned down for the umpteenth time, they go back and rebuild in exactly the same fashion!
It's just the intellectually retarded leading the intellectually retarded out there.
It's like going into a boxing match and finding out the other guy is bringing a knife, guns, artillery, grenades and a group of friends to kick your ass.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Rather than spend money to bury power lines to prevent them starting fires, California has instead decided to launch a satellite and build a high speed train to nowhere.
Preventing fires isn't as cool as shiny gadgets. Californians want the other kids to think they're cool.
Read or don't. PG&E has never paid a fine for something it was not responsible for, not now, not ever. https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/17/pge-uninsulated-power-conductors-were-factors-in-fatal-wildfires-federal-judge/
The power bills are being regulated by the state, they will remain. Cities are buying up incompetent PG&E infrastructure to run it themselves on a safety-first budget that isn't maximizing profits for a private corporate board.
Now please continue shilling if you wish.
Can't make a profit, can't drop unprofitable components of business, can't raise prices to meet costs...
Is California government still price fixing even after their price fixing caused Enron?
Zero federal dollars better go to saving California from itself...
"His name was James Damore."
It baffles me why the worlds super rich spend so much effort concealing their money to avoid taxes and whatnot but don't seem to factor in the non-zero risk that climate change will make ALL of their money completely worthless in 50 years. If I were a middle east prince, sure I'd crack down on dissidents which may be a threat to my power...but not nearly as threatening as an average temp of 130F through the whole frikkin summer. To say nothing about how many immigrants the US will see in a few decades. Comparatively, being "limited" to a 250mi range or paying 15% more for a plane ticket probably wouldn't seem as bad.
You're absolutely full of shit, PG&E has been more than profitable for a long time. Their stock price until their negligence in this fire brought it down was hovering at 48 bucks a share. You're absolutely a shilling retard.
PG&E is on the hook for their own negligence, are basically trying to force CA to bail them out or go broke after decades of profit gouging and shoddy shortcuts.
Chas you need to die in a fire, you lying bitch.
Exactly, PG&E has been proven mismanged for decades. San Bruno wasn't a one-off, they covered up their lies intentionally. This company is shit and needs to die.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/17/pge-uninsulated-power-conductors-were-factors-in-fatal-wildfires-federal-judge/
The premise that climate change was even a 50% factor is retarded. Climate change doesn't cause mismanagement of trees along power lines while the company pockets the money for their bottom line, as they provably did.
This. PG&E does bare minimum maintenance. Our power goes out about once a year for the better part of a day, entirely at random, along with an area that is a couple of miles on each side, containing several thousand homes. That's not in the mountains or in some hard-to-reach place. It's in the heart of the Silicon Valley.
PG&E is grossly incompetent. Even if you ignore their equipment malfunctions causing wildfires in 2017 AND 2018 and somehow blame that on global warming, there's also the San Bruno pipeline explosion that killed 8 people and destroyed 38 homes. There's certainly no global warming involved there. They simply don't maintain their equipment until something breaks. And this means things break. A lot.
Basically, PG&E is what happens when governments try to allow a regulated monopoly to provide critical utilities instead of a municipal electric company or a regional nonprofit. Every dollar that went to PG&E's sharedholders is a dollar that should have been used for routine maintenance and upgrades. If that money had been used that way, close to a hundred people would likely still be alive today, just from those two incidents alone. The problem is, the primary goal of any for-profit corporation, no matter how highly regulated, is and always will be profit, and their concern for public safety will always be limited to doing the bare minimum necessary to avoid getting sued out of existence.
This is their second bankruptcy this century. The first, though largely caused by the California energy crisis, was certainly not helped by a $2 million judgement against them in 1997 for failing to trim trees near power lines, resulting in a devastating wildfire in Nevada back in 1994. For them to have pretty much the same situation in 2017 is almost unconscionable. Yet judging from the frequent power outages in mountainous parts of the Bay Area, IMO, there's no reason to believe that they have learned their lesson and are maintaining trees adequately even to this day. The 2018 Camp Fire was just the additional straw thrown down on top of the camel posthumously.
Clearly, this company has failed. We should let it fail. Deny them Chapter 11. Cancel the stock. Make them file Chapter 7 and sell off the pieces. That's the only way things get better. Or at a bare minimum, order a complete replacement of all the company's leadership as part of the bankruptcy proceedings. If we keep letting the same people make the same bad decisions, how can we possibly expect different results?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
CA required safety improvements PG&E did not do, you shilling retard. https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/17/pge-uninsulated-power-conductors-were-factors-in-fatal-wildfires-federal-judge/
^^ Mod up factual non-Fox-Bullshit
https://www.wallstreetinvestorplace.com/2019/01/09/pge-corporation-pcg-heated-up-for-getting-5-plus-growth-for-this-year-eps/
Take a look at their financials, 2017 was a golden year for them. Every quarter their gross profits have been going up.
https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...
Every quarter their gross profit increases by a nice healthy amount. Maybe they are cutting costs in places they shouldn't be and causing the fires?
The only quarter they had a problem with as Q2 of 2018, where they made a big payout of 2.2 billion. Their filing shows this really odd though, not sure why it came out the way it did.
The Tolerant Liberal, everybody!
I know it's fashionable for conservatives to pick at the Leftist policies of the United States' most prosperous state but you're just making things up here. PG&E was doing great prior to the two big waves of fires that came through California https://www.macrotrends.net/st... and they would have zero liabilities in the case of these fires if they had maintained things the way they knew they were obligated to.
"Meanwhile, state and federal regulations basically conspire against them."
So we're convoluting state and federal policy now as a means of damning California? Most of our big open territory in this state is Federal.
"And they're made liable for any fires in the area of their equipment, whether it was actually their equipment or not..."
Citation needed.
"Meanwhile, California's idiot density is going up year over year as people with an actual functional brain flee the state."
Right, Californian's are idiots. What state are you from? Wait, it doesn't matter because it's not as prosperous as California.
"It's just the intellectually retarded leading the intellectually retarded out there."
Shit, I'll take our imperfect system over a Red state's any day of the week. At least we're able to generate meaningful wealth without the maximum exploitation of all of our public land as Texas does. We could certainly learn a thing or two from other blue states but I'm guessing that's not where you're at.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
From wikipedia...
....."...supply-demand imbalance, flawed market design and inconsistent rules made possible significant market manipulation as delineated in final investigation report. Without underlying market dysfunction, attempts to manipulate the market would not be successful."
By keeping the consumer price of electricity artificially low, the California government discouraged citizens from practicing conservation. In February 2001, California governor Gray Davis stated, "Believe me, if I wanted to raise rates I could have solved this problem in 20 minutes.
Energy price regulation incentivized suppliers to ration their electricity supply rather than expand production. The resulting scarcity created opportunities for market manipulation by energy speculators.
State lawmakers expected the price of electricity to decrease due to the resulting competition; hence they capped the price of electricity at the pre-deregulation level. Since they also saw it as imperative that the supply of electricity remain uninterrupted, utility companies were required by law to buy electricity from spot markets at uncapped prices when faced with imminent power shortages.
When the electricity demand in California rose, utilities had no financial incentive to expand production, as long term prices were capped. Instead, wholesalers such as Enron manipulated the market to force utility companies into daily spot markets for short term gain. For example, in a market technique known as megawatt laundering, wholesalers bought up electricity in California at below cap price to sell out of state, creating shortages. In some instances, wholesalers scheduled power transmission to create congestion and drive up prices.
After extensive investigation, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) substantially agreed in 2003
One of the biggest contributors to political campaigns during the period of law making that created the mess was Enron. So guess what fucker, your politicians made it happen, for their own personal gain. They sold you idiots out, and you are still blaming someone other than them.
"His name was James Damore."
If they had done their job then that wildfire likely would not have happened at all.
Thanks for the link! It says exactly what I was saying, PG&E is responsible for the fires... like this sentence from your link:
A PG&E transmission tower in a burned-out forest in Butte County. PG&Eâ(TM)s lack of properly insulated power conductors â" and the threat of trees or limbs falling on distribution lines â" played a role in causing some of the disastrous and lethal wildfires of 2017 and 2018,
I'll save that one to point out to others, thanks man!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Global warming has NOTHING to do with an electric company saving tons of money by stringing high tension lines through forests in mountain passes that era hit with very high winds multiple times per year....... AND THEN NOT EVEN MAINTAINING THEM PROPERLY.
This is hardly the first time a California power company has started one of these wildfires. The main causes of wild fires in CA are (in no particular order):
[a] power lines damaged or downed by high winds through mountain passes
[b] arsonistslooking to get a kick and see firetrucks
[c] illegal aliens burning uncontained fires for heat and/or cooking in their camp sites
[d] hunters or hikers stupidly setting fires to signal for help when lost
[e] kids playing with matches
[f] morons tossing cigarettes out of their moving cars
The power companies could easily stop being a source of fires in any mix of three simple ways:
[1] underground the lines, particularly in places with frequent high wind events
[2] quickly repair failures, particularly when they occur in wilderness areas filled with dry dead vegitation
[3] cut power to lines in places with high winds during the high wind events (makes angry customers but at least it does not kill them)
PG&E brilliantly did NONE of the above....and in what has become a California tradition, they have always counted on the state government helping them shift the blame (and the bills for damages) off of the executives and shareholders and onto the rate payers instead. As long as the rate payers are punished for every misdeed by the company, there is ZERO motivation for the company to improve its behavior.
"Enron Chiefs Guilty of Fraud and Conspiracy. ... Mr. Skilling was convicted of 18 counts of fraud and conspiracy and one count of insider trading. He was acquitted on nine counts of insider trading. Mr. Lay was found guilty on six counts of fraud and conspiracy and four counts of bank fraud."
Enron Chiefs Guilty of Fraud and Conspiracy
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVOMAY 25, 2006
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/business/25cnd-enron.html
Maybe Rockoon the head-in-ass Trump supporting traitor legitimately can't read? I mean that would explain a lot of the blind, idiotic head-in-ass apologism.
They're basically required to service areas that will never be profitable
Just take a look at this helpful link someone provided me, PG&E with uninsulated conductors in the middle of a forest!
Even if they are required to service areas they cannot make a profit on (which I question if it's actually all that true, but leave that to the side). Even if, there is no excuse for shoddy line work like this.
Electric companies in PLENTY of other states manage to run power lines to lots poorer areas than California has, in dry conditions without shoddy work like this and without causing fires.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES AND PROPAGANDA UNTIL YOU ARE BRUTALLY MURDERED NAZI FAGGOT KEN DOLL
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
This wacko is going to be in the nut house come 2020 when the God Emperor still sits on the throne.
Why can't it be a public service?
Why do private companies need to make huge profits? They are using public resources to do it. Public lands. Our rivers and our lakes.
Why does someone need to profit?
You can see the outcome. When a company is only profit driven, they will do everything they can to lower costs. That means, layoffs, lack of maintenance, substandard components and all the rest of it.
In the end, we, as the consumer still pay out the ass for the power they generate, much of which is subsidized by the government anyhow.
So, why not just have the state take it over?
Then there is no "coal industry" to own local politicians and change laws to allow the maximum pollution possible. There would be no incentive to pollute since the state would just have to pay to clean it up anyhow.
They think that they can blame this on global warming? I call bullshit. Global warming and it's effects on humanity has been something people in the USA have been beaten over the head with for at least 30 years now. They knew that global warming would mean greater demand for electricity for air conditioning, that this meant greater threats of storms and wild fires, this is not news. What have they been doing for the last 30 years to stop this from happening?
I will say that PG&E might not have all the blame here, they are in a business that is highly regulated by government. The government of California is likely the most to blame here, and some of this might land on the shoulders of the federal government too.
Even before global warming was in the common vocabulary we had threats of acid rain and other environmental disaster. What did California do about this? They declared the state a "nuclear free zone" meaning that they denied themselves access to the safest and cleanest source of energy available. This was true then and now. Nuclear power is far cheaper and far more reliable than wind or solar power. If they were paying attention to the science on global warming then they should also have been paying attention to the best science could tell them on how to combat it.
This is why I believe that so many politicians are anti-science, they've legislated themselves into a global warming corner. If you want to convince me that the "science is settled" on global warming then why are you ignoring the science on the safest and lowest CO2 energy source we have? Which is the greater threat to California, America, and the world? Is it global warming or nuclear power? If you say global warming then you are fools for shutting down the nuclear power plants you had and not building more. If you say global warming then you are fools for not planning on the effects and costs they will entail decades ago.
Nope, you can't blame this on global warming you fools. This is just bad management from the top to the bottom. I hope you enjoy freezing in the dark.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
YOU tried to make it about CA's taxes
Wrong number man, I never said a thing about taxes or profitability. I can honestly say I have no dog in the hunt you are trying to promote.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You are a global warming denialist. The fact is global warming is measurable, and it affects fire intensity and wind speed, etc. What it does not do is force a company to not do maintenance and lie about it.
PG&E is mismanaged, but your history of denying climate change is real overshadows anything you could say about it. So you're correct, PG&E is at fault, not climate change, in this fire's cause.
That does not make climate change a non-factor, but a much less legally liable entity given the provable negligence at PG&E - however climate change does make huge fires more common overall, worldwide.
Even the mild warming is helping pests move north as the hard freeze line moves north, causing more trees to be infested by killer beetles and fungi/diseases, creating even more fuel. Climate change does play a role.
Your entire reason for being is to pretend that fact isn't a fact.
Since no sensible company will take over for them, I imagine the state will be forced into running the power system for most of the state. Not sure how the greater region will fare. Perhaps some municipalities will take over their local distribution, but without generation they will be suffering regular brownouts and outages and probably bid up the power from the Palo Verde generator in Arizona to unusual levels.
They will have to change that solar-panels-on-the-roof law to apply to everyone and to provide enough power to satisfy the day and make it take effect immediately. It will be quiet at night because the battery industry does not make enough batteries to keep them going at night.
And since the same corrupt state officials will still be in place, the fires will continue unabated. The rates will go up and the press will have to keep pushing the fraudulent global warning scenario as the cause instead of the corrupt and incompetent state government.
And more people will flee CA while they can, and bring their brain-dead politics to other formerly healthy states.
Uninsulated power conductors, really?
Hey man, all I did was actually read the link I posted, and passed on what a federal judge learned as part of the trial..
from the link I posted:
The judge, however, also noted a lack of insulation for power conductors owned and operated by PG&E as a factor in the fatal wildfires
You are claiming the judge was incorrect? Presumably he was shown quite a lot of evidence.
Yes bad forest management was also to blame. But lots of other places have trees blow into lines without causing major fires.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No one is going to be prepared to provide service to those areas. What fun.
Private or public the liability aspect is simply too expensive to deal with.
Dumb ass if they did proper forest management in California then faulty power equipment would have caused a tiny fire instead of a huge conflagration.
It could have just as easily been a cigarette or arson or a lightning strike. The cause of the initial spark is irrelevant if there isnt enough underbrush to serve as fuel.
You are an ignorant pos and need to stfu before your brain implodes from the sheer weight of your own ignorance and stupidity.
Yes pg&e are a bunch of morons but so are you.
At least PG&E doesn't have any nuclear reactors going Fukushima yet.
Basically, PG&E is what happens when governments try to allow a regulated monopoly to provide critical utilities instead of a municipal electric company or a regional nonprofit. Every dollar that went to PG&E's sharedholders is a dollar that should have been used for routine maintenance and upgrades. If that money had been used that way, close to a hundred people would likely still be alive today, just from those two incidents alone. The problem is, the primary goal of any for-profit corporation, no matter how highly regulated, is and always will be profit, and their concern for public safety will always be limited to doing the bare minimum necessary to avoid getting sued out of existence.
If there's no profit in providing electrical services then why would anyone bother to invest in it? Think about that.
I think you let your government schooling interfere with your education. There's nothing inherently wrong with people making money on this. Don't blame this on malice when incompetence would suffice. I'm guessing that the people running this utility live in an area that could go up in smoke if something went wrong. I feel confident in this assumption because as big as California might be there's a good chance that the people involved here run the risk of their own hide getting burned if there is a wildfire caused by mismanagement of the largest utility in the state. If it's not their own life they care about then it's that of their family or friends.
Profit is a great motivator and we can use this as motivation to provide better services and products. Apple and Microsoft don't make computers and software because they are nice people, they do it because it makes them money. What is an even better motivator is keeping things around them from going up in smoke so the people involved won't see their house turned to ashes and having to attend the funeral of a loved one.
These people need to make money providing electricity or they will be forced to make their money doing something else. There must be a profit or the lights go out. You believe a non-profit could do better? Why? The people must still be paid for doing their jobs or they can't afford to eat. This is still a profit even if there isn't a stockholder expecting a dividend. Or you thing a government could to better? Then tell me when a government has ever got something done on time and under budget.
This is not something that can be fixed by removing the profit motive. If these people are not concerned about their own house getting burned down in a wildfire then they simply need to be removed from working at an electrical utility, and quite likely put in a mental hospital and treated for suicidal tendencies.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Standard issue with electrical reticulation is that the general public are so uninformed as to be living in a land of comic book physics.
The industry is full of really responsible people invested in their business going well and delivering a service. The OP beautifully points out how a couple of inflexible limits: a requirement to provide power into dangerous places - uneconomically, liability through perverse legislation and the impact of climate change has come around to ... severely bite the legislators in the ass, and the voting public and consumers.
While it may be fun to win over in some legal match its a zero sum game and hugely wasteful.
https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=13257348&cid=57989904 --- pretty sure that's still you, yep. More denials and wind twisting coming up, wait for it.
Face it, your long history of anti-CA and anti-AGW propaganda precedes you and everyone knows you're not a reputable source of information on any topic that interests you, because you're just too willing to lie.
You don't even realize you're doing it. I think it's politically pathalogical with you. You're just thrilled you have a story that legitimately CAN NOT be blamed on climate change here to crow about.
That's the only reason you're interested at all. Otherwise? You'd be on your usual Libertarian idiot's spiel about taxes and corporate profitability being the only concerns. We know you Kendall.
Sorry, blathering idiot. The judge in the case says you're full of shit. https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/17/pge-uninsulated-power-conductors-were-factors-in-fatal-wildfires-federal-judge/
The lines were SEEN sparking near and at the time when the fire began. PG&E did not depower them as was their own stated procedure anyway, failed to maintain the trees AND was missing insulators.
Plus the rest of their shady cover-up history to boot. Now you could say CA is incompetent by not regulating PG&E hard enough, and on that obvious and basic infantile-level point I'd agree.
You're a brand new baby in the world getting a first day of education, good for you child. Now run along and learn to read so you don't get taken advantage of by the orange con man next time, sweetheart.
Seek psychological help, you really need it. Smoke some weed or take some Lexapro. In the meantime, stay off the Internet. It's bad for you.
Are you saying I bought my generator for irrational reasons? There was no profit motive, it costs a lot to run... but it keeps the power on.
Keep whining into your meth, GOP. CA loves your salty tears, it's terroir.
These people need to make money providing electricity or they will be forced to make their money doing something else. There must be a profit or the lights go out. You believe a non-profit could do better? Why? The people must still be paid for doing their jobs or they can't afford to eat. This is still a profit even if there isn't a stockholder expecting a dividend.
Payroll is an expense, not a profit. Non-profit companies do pay their employees. I suppose you might find a non-profit that's staffed entirely by unpaid volunteers, but that's not necessary for non-profit status. Dividends, however, are profit. And a waste of money from the point of view of the non-shareholding consumer.
Even if it were climate change it would not be the first "bankruptcy" due to climate change. That would belong to the hunters of Doggerland about 10,000 year ago which is where the North Sea is today due to climate change. Now admittedly the concept of bankruptcy was a little different back then, there being no banks, but they certainly traded and were definitely put out of business by climate change.
Payroll is an expense, not a profit.
For the people working there payroll is their profit. If you want good people working there then you need to pay them and pay them well. No matter what you say about non-profit organizations there will be people making money.
Remember that the NFL used to be a non-profit until enough people complained about millionaires sheltering their own personal profits under this part of tax law. There is still a lot of money made in non-profit corporations, saying otherwise is provably false.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
PG&E is exactly what an economist would tell you will happen when government sets a price ceiling and supply isn't allowed to be reduced to compensate. Instead of quantity supplied being reduced (because that's illegal), quality is reduced as much as possible (Same exact economic issue with rent control price ceilings creating slumlords). The whole thing is the State of California's fault, a predictable result of their laws and regulatory mismanagement.
But sure, blame the power company which isn't allowed to make any significant decisions (who to sell power to, for how much and how top roduce and sell it) that California effectively runs via regulation.
San Diego Gas and Electric has the exact same issue as PG&E, just to a lesser extent because they're smaller.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
How is someone starting a fire proof of cg?!?
The Pacific Gas and Electric Company is an American investor-owned utility with publicly traded stock that is headquartered in the Pacific Gas & Electric Building in San Francisco.
The major flaw in that argument is that it happened under a for profit system.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
Blame climate change for cost cutting the maintenance of your infrastructure.
The PUC of California sets a maximum rate and profit level for PG&E and other utilities, and they do this each year. This was what caused the first bankruptcy awhile back when electricity prices were spiking but PG&E couldn't raise rates. This ceiling forces the utilities to find ways to conserve and run more efficiently.
You mean raking the forest floor?
For the people working there payroll is their profit. If you want good people working there then you need to pay them and pay them well.
Did you miss the bit where I said non-profits pay their employees? The point is that a non-profit doesn't try to earn more money than it spends on itself. No hoard of cash, no dividend payments, just business expenses. A for-profit company has to generate extra money for its shareholders, either by charging more or spending less. So a non-profit should actually be able to pay its employees more than a for-profit, since shareholders aren't leeching out value.
To be fair, above about 100 IQ doesn't correlate with success or performance. It's a bullshit measure
I think you let your government schooling interfere with your education.
Not the original poster here, but I just wanted to say: Fuck you.
If you were really as smart as you think you are, you'd know that throwing in childish insults like this does nothing to prove your point, and even less to convince others in a discussion.
This what you get with half-arses socialist policies. What they need to do is nationalize electricity production. Make it non-profit and priced according to what is required to properly maintain it.
That's un-American though so instead you get this kind of cap, with the power company trying to squeeze profits out of it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
How having underground power cables is so expensive that no one could ever afford to upgrade their transmission lines to be underground?
What several billion in liability? Woulnd't have had that if you moved you lines underground.
Don't have to worry about power lines going down with every gust of wind and starting fires in the forests they run through.
Here in the UK whilst years ago power cables and telephone cables were stuck on poles they are now buried under the ground wherever possible, usually several feet. Perhaps if that had been adopted in the USA instead of this obsession with sticking them on poles then you'd not have them wiped out by fires in the south, typhoons, tornadoes and hurricanes elsewhere or winter weather in the north. And whilst the initial cost is higher, over the long term they save loads.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Forest fires stem from two things, people building homes too close to forests and people failing to properly remove old tree's that fuel any forest fires that are started. But the new blame game is to blame everyone who caused global climate change. Same thing with hurricane's let's blame climate and man instead of stupid people building too close to a predictable eventual natural disaster.
This is how you can get surprised by the champion of 'free market capitalism': I checked in wikipedia - in 2001 changes have been introduced to the way electricity is sold in Cal. and the result is that indeed the price for customers is set by commission and the company is forced to provide as much electricity as the customers want. This can work only if commission increases the prices to cover the costs including the ones caused by speculating individuals. /.ers here would support such action independently of whether everybody can actually do that or not (hint: people in apartment blocks have limited to no chance of providing for themselves). It seems to me that human population density has crossed the line of what is allowed given average human stupidity. At least in California it did.
Even if these speculators were not there or had mercy and did not suck the money out of PG&E it was destined to fall - no commission made of elected individuals can increase the price sufficiently if elections are coming. Usual consequence of such situation is that either government takes active role in providing such regulated goods while PG&E would be just selling it to government or the company goes bust at some point in near future. Such schemes always fail eventually and this has been seen throughout history of mankind - sometimes it just takes longer for zombies like PG&E to fall. How this has anything to do with (however induced and whether existent or not) climate change I really cannot fathom. OTOH the church of man induced climate change is just a fact of life.
I wonder how this will go. Maybe Californians should start producing their own electricity in their homes? I am sure
For one, if there was no law for incorporation, then PG&E would not exist, so those laws are one reason why it CAN fail at all. Why is there this narrative that there being one reason for bankrupcy not being that there is ONLY one reason?
Unable to hold on to more than one at a time?
Seriously. What is GP thinking? Obviously there was profit, and it's been privatized. And then here's the government propping up the failure---socializing the risk. Again. It's corporate welfare.
It I'd ok, though because the were protesting white patriarchy.
Burn baby burn
Cool. How did they manage to write those laws without any useful written language? Or is that claim just you showing off shit?
If only you would rake your forests like the people of Finland! Then you would have no problems at all!
This is some masterful spin, but this is a pattern that has been repeated around the state several times. I'm in San Diego, so I get power from SDG&E, not PG&E. In 2007, SDG&E agreed to pay a few billion dollars for their role in causing large wildfires here. A few years later their fire prevention plan was simply that they would turn off the power grid when it was hot and dry. It took a while, but it seems like today they're actually doing pretty well at fire mitigation.
It is possible to deliver power in California, deal with the weather, and actually maintain and upgrade your equipment.
The financial/energy system we have in California is odd. PG&E was guaranteed profits of 10% of their equity (liabilities from negligence not included). They own an aging infrastructure, and don't appear to have any desire to upgrade it, which is definitely not what you see elsewhere in California. You'd think they would learn from watching other energy companies in the state have their own brush with bankruptcy, leading to mothballing of old power plants and modernizing power lines ASAP.
He made YOU go all fuckwit and moronic and made the words the parent posted put down change to completely and utterly new ones.
Meanwhile you STILL blame either hillary or obama for things despite "winning".
YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT PG&E MORON - YOU PROVED IT
Judges ARE however trained to judge on the facts presented to them in court, which you have no access to either. So either the judge is correct on the matter OR PG7Es lawyers were incompetent idiots that failed to provide any counterevidence to the prosecution even to the very minor level of "creating a level of doubt over the veracity of the evidence presented".
Which would make it PG&E's fault still. If they're THIS incompetent over their hired lawyers, what makes you think they're not equally incompetent over the electrical work done by the company too? C*Os aren't electricians. They're accountants and lawyer trained.
But...Socialism will fix all our problems! AOC told me so!!
They won't get subsidised for it and it will ruin them entirely.
So why do they need nuclear again? So that they can piss away their hoarded cash and assets on other companies' profits?
now that president trump has visited
I will agree that climate change made PG&E's situation worse. But the post seems to almost completely absolve PG&E of its own responsibility in creating these fires. PG&E has known for years that its equipment was causing fires. Shortly before the Campfire which devastated Paradise, CA; PG&E was warned by homeowners that its lines were hitting trees and causing sparks. PG&E apparently could not be bothered to trim those trees.
This didn't happen overnight. And PG&E has allegedly repeatedly ignored customer complaints about power lines coming into contact with trees. Remember the movie "Erin Brokovich"? That was based on a true story about PG&E polluting groundwater, causing residents to develop cancer. So PG&E has a history of climactic terrorism. PG&E executives need to be tried for criminal homicidal negligence (80+ deaths from recent fires) and serve long prison sentences.
Why does the US have so many above-ground power lines compared to other developed countries?
So either companies are REALLY dumb and hate vast sums of money OR the climate in Calif. HAS changed to one where fires are far more common.
Neither of which your political ideology will want to accept.
So what retarded bollocks will you make up now to explain it away?
The state is already running PG&E. Fixing prices on energy, denying the building of profitable power plants, extreme regulation of labor, supply and demand. Now they're bankrupt while across the country energy companies are some of the most profitable businesses.
Welcome to socialism. Now let the government take it over and raise prices to $0.50/kWh to pay for 'global warming', 'carbon credits' and massive government waste.
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Yeah, irresponsible corporation that are regulated out of existence and can't even trim trees for safety without lawsuits and complaints (https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article219315140.html ; https://stopsmartmeters.org/20... ; https://www.actionnewsnow.com/...)
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PG&E is the scapegoat for California's insane utility regulations and forest mismanagement.
Do you honestly think it's going to get better now?
I mean no.
If you're determined NOT to know a reason, then nobody knows the reason for ANYTHING. However when 97% of experts say they consider it so, 2% say they're not convinced yet and 1% say it's something else, then you are a fuckwit to believe the 1%.
But the Democrats have been in power for decades in CA, embedded into state agencies and controlling regulations, and this massive and deadly fire happened under their watch. They own this tragedy, just like they owned the explosion in San Bruno. It's not about SuperKendall at all.
There won't be any investors willing to put a dime into California power companies now. The state will have to take over the grid whether they want to or not.
California regularly has had natural drought, unrelated to humans, including the mega-droughts (two decades or longer) 850-1090 and 1140-1320, the latter believed to cause the end of the Pueblos in the south west. (These may have been related to the "Medieval Warm Period" (roughly 950-1250) in Europe and larger global changes.) Any competent climate-historian can tell you that the last 150 years were atypically wet compared to the rest of the last 1400 (fourteen-hundred) years... but us humans have such short lives that they seem normal. California's normal state is drought.
Californians have piped a huge amount of water in and imposed reverse-desertification through landscaping (adds shade, soil, ability to buffer rain) and irrigation, and yet this anthropogenic regional wetting can't beat the natural swings.
So while PGE may not be adjusting to a swing, and it may be climate change causing it, this is clearly a case where humans aren't in control the climate. Either way, PGE is at fault for somehow not anticipating wildfires in a region that has them regularly.
you can't get away with a lot of the crap you used to. 50 years ago the fires wouldn't have been so bad and they would have gotten away with it. The next company that replaces them (probably the same folks just reincorporated, hooray) will have to actually maintain that infrastructure, which is an added expense.
The thing about climate change is it's changing how we live and work in lot of way. Mostly though it's just adding expense and making life more difficult. Plus the global economy's already pretty crap for the working class, so it's not like it'd take much to push it over the edge into permanent recession.
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...
universal services.
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When the regulatory hammer comes down, the cost to transmission and distribution will be high. Those costs will be paid by the customer in higher rates. Punish PG&E but the results will ripple for quite some time.
But every other month there is a story in the local newspapers about PG&E being protested or sued by some green group for "excessive" trimming of trees or doing maintenance work on property some activist purchased to keep PG&E from 'disturbing wildlife'.
California wants its cake and eat it too. It wants carbon credits but not pay for it through excessive energy cost, it wants heavy regulation of utilities but do this at minimal cost and with zero impact. California is one of the most expensive states when it comes to energy and that is WITH the government(s) setting or adjusting the rates.
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But sure, blame the power company which isn't allowed to make any significant decisions (who to sell power to, for how much and how top reduce and sell it) that California effectively runs via regulation.
Got any proof of their due diligence? If they sounded the alarm and truly had no way to do anything, rather than say diverting profits back to shareholders or others, then I'd buy this..
Of course government are partly there to make sure corporate greed doesn't screw over their people, so did people in government sound the alarm? They were also responsible.
California's energy markets were deregulated 20 years ago
Yes, Solyndra was created to "stop" client change but that's just the other side of the coin.
First off, the drought was a result of natural variation. And anyone that checks reservoir levels today will find were at about the historical average, overall. If we had a drought - it's gone.
The real cause of the fires was the handwringing and NIMBY Gaia worshipers throwing up legal roadblocks to PG&E cutting back trees near power lines.
This was a manufactured (in that environmentalists fought against accepted standards for power line clearance) disaster that is being blamed on a non-event (in that there was no climate-change drive to the drought).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Profit != value
There may be social value in having people in rural areas that are getting electricity, even if there is no private profit in it. In the case of many farms, this is true. Some people would say "just cover the farms", but who the hell is going to live on a farm with no neighbors? And you'd have to be a complete moron to argue that we don't need farms.
Money is actually quite poor at reflecting the value of necessities, but is excellent for luxuries. When you have a society where only 2% of the population needs to work in order for everyone to survive, money would be pointless if everyone was unemployed. So the government steps in, plays with some subsidies to make certain basics are "cheaper" than what a free market would create because again, money does not represent public value, only private value.
A simple difference between public and private values are it is in my private interest to dump my pollution and not care about anyone down stream. But just because it's good for me doesn't mean it doesn't cause more overall damage to everyone else. Then there's "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". A person contributes more value to society than they get paid. The per working person average GDP is 6x than of the average working person's income. This also applies to healthcare. Each person who dies to a treatable health issue is a onetime reduction to the GDP of $1mil. Just because the person can't afford $100k in hospital bills doesn't mean it isn't worth covering them.
Basically, PG&E is what happens when governments try to allow a regulated monopoly to provide critical utilities instead of a municipal electric company or a regional nonprofit.
Odd we haven't had this problem in any other state. Most of the country power is provided by for-profit, regulated utilities. I have no idea what's going over there in California, but there about has to be something different because we just don't have this problem in any other state.
Why click bait the article with a /. lead which touts climate change. California has a dry climate which existed well before the industrial revolution.
I'd expect /. to have higher standards and avoid click bait terms in article write ups.
What's next a 'breast implants' cause 'climate change' story?
From Wipidea: The Santa Ana winds and the accompanying raging wildfires have been a part of the ecosystem of the Los Angeles Basin for over 5,000 years, dating back to the earliest habitation of the region by the Tongva and Tataviam peoples.
ever hear of that movie Erin Brachovish?
An evil company polluted peoples water? and denied it? Fought tooth and nail to deny compensations.
Yea --- that evil company was PG&E
Cancel the business. They clearly do not know how to manage it without a huge societal toll.
Not just let them fail (which we should), but then fire every single sitting CPUC member, and bar them for life from ever running for public office or working for the State Government. CPUC is supposed to oversee these kinds of things - and they sit around earning $142,000 per year. Of course, it's a great way to get paybacks from the Governor (who appoints them), and when you have millions and millions getting funneled from the utilities into the Governor's mansion, well - you tend to put people into the CPUC who will do the bidding of the utility. Toss them all out - even the hand-picked "heir" to the Governor's mansion.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Climate change? No. They made an economic choice to stop trimming vegetation near power lines in order to give more money to their executives. With that decision publicly made still fresh in the minds of many outraged customers, they knew that when this happened (and it was inevitable) that the company would go under.
PG&E is exactly what an economist would tell you will happen when government sets a price ceiling and supply isn't allowed to be reduced to compensate.
That, sir, is a load of hot cockery.
So just to be clear, even after paying millions of dollars to executives who weren't doing their jobs, PGE was able to turn a profit of $1.65 billion up 18% from the prior year even though their revenues had fallen! How do you think they managed that? As long as they are failing to maintain infrastructure as they are legally obligated to do, every single dollar of that profit represents an effective theft from The People, let alone their customers.
In exchange for their various right-of-way monopolies, maintenance vehicle access and the like, they are obligated to maintain the infrastructure in safe condition, and do business in a fair manner. They are doing neither. PGE is a criminal conspiracy to defraud the people who reside or even simply have financial interests in the area which they "serve". And beyond that: it has killed in the past, it has killed recently, and it will kill again. And those responsible will almost certainly not only face no punishment, but get to retain the majority of their ill-gotten gains.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The state is already running PG&E. Fixing prices on energy, denying the building of profitable power plants, extreme regulation of labor, supply and demand. Now they're bankrupt while across the country energy companies are some of the most profitable businesses.
Nope. "PG&E said its 2017 net profit was up 18 percent from a year earlier at $1.65 billion, but its 2017 revenue of $17.14 billion was down 3 percent over the same period." The simple truth is that if they weren't starting fires, PGE would be immensely profitable. But they didn't do what they were required to do, and now they're being held accountable. And they had the money to do it, but they instead gave the top executives big raises, and paid a substantial profit to shareholders (mostly blackrock, vanguard, and state street.)
The simplest explanation for the numbers is that they have more than enough money to do this maintenance, but they are choosing not to.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wow! CA is supposed to insulate their high voltage transmission lines like exactly ZERO other utilities around the world do! We are UBER progressive here!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
If there's no profit in providing electrical services then why would anyone bother to invest in it?
Because I have enough foresight to attach a dollar-value to not having my power go out randomly for hours or days at a time?
It's not that simple. Being an environmentalist doesn't necessarily mean you are against using clearing fires. Often residents got angry when "controlled burns" or preventable fires got out of control and leveled their neighborhood. Any fire has some risk of spreading outside of its predicted or "controlled" area.
Such residents formed lobbying groups, and they asked for evidence that the techniques being used actually worked. Turns out record-keeping was poor such that nobody could present clear evidence. (The "ecology nuts" some refer to are actually lobbyists.)
Plus, clear-cutting (thinning) was an alternative to controlled burns or "allowed" burns, or at least a supplement to reduce their needs and risk. If you thin the forest occasionally, then the need for controlled/allowed burns would go down, at least in theory.
But both State and Federal funds dried up during the Great Recession, and both clear-cutting and the original techniques fell behind schedule. As is typical during big economic slumps, long-term projects get reduced. And climate-change may have made the problem worse.
Table-ized A.I.
Oh wait. If you consider extinction as a kind of bankruptcy, I'd say woolly mammoths were.
But climate change is the reason we have Weather Forecasters.
That might be because in the Midwest, where I live, we don't have an irrational fear of far cheaper and far more reliable nuclear power.
Except you do. And an irrational fear of wind and solar. There are lawsuits in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa over the supposed harm,
A state that wants to be "carbon free" and also deny itself access to cheap, reliable, and "carbon free" nuclear power will inevitably have far higher energy costs.
Any state that lets itself be suckered into tolerating the nuclear industry will waste billions, see Georgia and South Carolina, where both supposed constructions have failed to deliver power.
Meanwhile, Wind and Solar will go up today. And it is Sunday. But they work.
10 billion and neither Vogtle or Summer is working.
I found out recently that the nuclear power plant near me is threatening to close down and not build a new nuclear power plant to replace it. I expect this will raise rates and increase the potential for outages. If we can't get power from that nuclear power plant then it must be carried over far longer lines where there would be higher probability of a downed power line somewhere between the power plant and customers.
The nuclear plant near me tripped twice last year. So near as in I could see it from the top of my house if not for the hill in the way. I needed those lines anyway.
Do the smart thing, forget the nuclear shilling, before you get a beat down.
The not in my backyard types are to blame here.
Nope. It is the corporate boardroom. Who do have exclusive fenced backyards but you don't know to blame them, do you?
They'll run away with billions just like last time.
So if something bad happens under a system then the system is bad? Show us any system where only good things happen.
An earned wage is not profit. That cost time and talents in investment which should be subtracted from the return before any of it can be called a profit. Any reasonable accountant that understands subtracting costs from gross to calculate net might be inclined to state that there is no profit in ones wage but a mere exchange.
Every dollar that went to PG&E's sharedholders is a dollar that should have been used for routine maintenance and upgrades.
Same in NS. Power got privatised, and money goes to shareholders instead of into maintenance.
My father-in-law reported trees that were on the verge of falling on power lines. They didn't care. Told him to call when they fall on the lines. They didn't do anything proactively.
One of the workers told him that when a bunch of trees fall on lines in storms, the government (aka tax payers) pay to take care of it.
Everyone needs power, and there's no competition. This is not an industry that should be for-profit. Money siphoned off to shareholders is an inefficiency.
They are being told/sued not to by various green activist groups both within and outside government. Every time they trim trees some group is on the news that opposes it saying it destroys nature.
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If there's no profit in providing electrical services then why would anyone bother to invest in it? Think about that.
Not trying to be rude, but that's the dumbest comment I've seen today.
The people who use the power invest in it by paying for it. As I said in a comment above, money going to investors is an inefficiency. It's money lost that doesn't improve the system.
The user pays for what they use and for maintenance of the system, as well as a bit more for new infrastructure. Why would you insist they also need to pay a bunch of shareholders as well?
Having to please shareholders also encourages getting rid of workers and decreasing maintenance and infrastructure improvements to send more of the money to the shareholders. Eventually everything starts falling apart, the CEO leaves with a huge bonus, and the taxpayer is left to clean up the mess, because everyone still needs electricity.
They are being told/sued not to by various green activist groups both within and outside government.
Not in the places where they're actually starting fires.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ha Ha Ha HA!!!
So fucking funny, they've managed to keep Solar out of perhaps the sunniest place on the planet!
They blame PG&E for a fire when 99% of forest fires are caused by thunderstorms.
Californication..Land of fruits and nuts.
The major flaw in that argument is that it happened under a for profit system.
How would operating this as a non-profit or government change anything? Even under a non-profit there is the possibility for management to take short cuts on costs, like in maintaining their wires, to improve income which can legally be used to pay higher wages to themselves. A government bureaucrat could do this as well, by forcing the costs low they can look good to their superiors and/or voters and therefore stay in their position, get re-elected, be eligible for a bonus, etc. Then if a wildfire is started then it's going to be real hard to find evidence of who did what when and caused it all, they can blame "climate change", regulations that tied their hands, insufficient funds (which gets back to regulations since it's often the government that set prices), etc.
Yep, this happened under a for-profit corporation, and it could happen under any other kind of corporation that is just as corrupt, incompetent, or insufficiently motivated to operate their power lines safely.
Climate change did not cause them to neglect fire safety.
Climate change increased their exposure to that neglect.
Same as a bad hard drive increases exposure to not having backups.
With the major electric company for California filing for bankruptcy, what is next?
Do we just stop "doing electricity"?
One cannot guarantee a power line will not fall and cause a fire. One cannot guarantee a tree or a car or whatever will knock down a power line. Also, the costs of the lawsuits don't get paid by the good fairy. They get paid by the *users* of the service.
If the government takes over electrical distribution, will it be better? Will they shut off the electricity every time there is wind or a storm?
It's easy to gripe.
What is the alternative to PG&E distributing and producing power?
Paradise was built in a known fire trap. The previous fire chief resigned within a month as he knew there was no way to defend Paradise against a forest fire. People need to stop building in fire trap areas and if they want to build then PGE should not be forced to provide service to them.
During the Bankruptcy PGE should be broken up into 2 companies - a good PGE which serves urban areas and a bad PGE to serve firetrap areas and which charges higher tariffs to cover the risk and additional equipment. I am tired of subsidizing rural folks. Housing in the cities is crazy expensive. I dont have the spare funds to subsidize people who want to live in the wilderness.
**Life is too short to be serious**
But of COURSE these people had to turn it into a Left-Right issue.
Because that's all of the very little they know anything about.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I can speak on Illinois.
In states like California, repayment on a properly sized solar install can be 3-7 years.
In states like Illinois and Michigan, that jumps to 10-15.
Also, to generate equivalent power to a Californian setup, you have to increase the size of the array. Further skewing repaynment ammortization.
Also, what are the plans for EOL for used panels. They're not really recyclable.
So, what? Megatons of landfill?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
They had an approved fire prevention plan they worked out in conjunction with the CA regulators.
In terms of operational profits, the California Public Utilities Commission sets the amount of profit each utility (including PG&E) can make. Their profit doesn't even depend on how much they sell or the cost to them of what they sell, it's a fixed number which the regulators decide on. You don't seem to comprehend how tightly controlled they are by the regulators.
So if you don't like them, just go use a different company.... oh wait, the CA government won't let you do that, either.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
-LYING FAGGOT KEN DOLL PRETENDS HE WAS SAYING THIS WAS ABOUT INSULATORS MISSING WHERE?
"In that case, would not the wise company use equipment that did not start fires?
Is PG&E the only electric company on Earth who provides power in dry areas? No they are not. Lots of other companies seem manage this task just fine without countless fires sparked by electrical equipment.
California has some of the highest taxes in the U.S., what have the customers gained from it but pain and suffering?"
If people wan to build in firetraps no utility should be forced to provide power there
**Life is too short to be serious**
This summary and articles concluding that this is a "climate change bankruptcy" start as that explanation as their goal and then look for evidence to support it.
It took until almost the end of the summary to get to some of the factors that actually contributed to it. Specially government laws and regulations forcing PG&E to service everyone and take liability regardless if they are at fault. Another contributing factor not mentioned is that Insurance companies not able to set rates for actual risk, including not able to raise rates after major fires that demonstrate the risk.
In other words, this has little to do with climate change and everything to do with socialist policies that effectively incentivised people to build where they shouldn't have or if they were going to build there, they didn't pay the proper market rates, and didn't build to a code that would have reduced the risks.
Far easier to blame "climate change" and fits the socialist agenda better than having to blame themselves for this mess.
Basically, PG&E is what happens when governments try to allow a regulated monopoly to provide critical utilities instead of a municipal electric company or a regional nonprofit. Every dollar that went to PG&E's sharedholders is a dollar that should have been used for routine maintenance and upgrades. If that money had been used that way, close to a hundred people would likely still be alive today, just from those two incidents alone. The problem is, the primary goal of any for-profit corporation, no matter how highly regulated, is and always will be profit, and their concern for public safety will always be limited to doing the bare minimum necessary to avoid getting sued out of existence.
If there's no profit in providing electrical services then why would anyone bother to invest in it?
Because they need electricity for themselves. 56% of the United States by land area gets its power from electrical co-ops. In principle, there's no reason that number couldn't be 100%.
There's nothing inherently wrong with people making money on this
Except when the desire to make a profit causes you to divert safety money into bonuses and stock dividends. To date, no one has been criminally charged in that incident, in part because the corporate veil in this country is way too strong.
These people need to make money providing electricity or they will be forced to make their money doing something else. There must be a profit or the lights go out. You believe a non-profit could do better? Why?
Because the largest power provider in the United States is a little non-profit called TVA, with almost 5x the generating capacity of PG&E. And their customers (direct or indirect) average 8 to 12 cents per kWh while more than two-thirds of my PG&E residential usage is billed at over 28 cents per kWh. Profit in electrical utility companies is, indeed, a very bad thing.
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The corporation certainly wouldn't have diverted safety funds into bonuses and stock dividends, because there would be no stockholders.
I mean yes, ostensibly a nonprofit could still divert safety funds into bonuses, but it would likely cost them their nonprofit status.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It would appear that there's plenty of blame to go around. And while it's all fun and games to point the finger at the big corporation, WTF are you going to do to fix the problem when it's a highly regulated public utility? Sorry, but CA brought this upon itself with screwed up laws, regulations, lawsuits, lack of proper forest management, etc. Do you think some other utility is suddenly going to pop up to replace them? All of these lawsuits end up being effectively paid for by the taxpayers because the cost gets passed along.
Just another day in Paradise
"You don't seem to comprehend how tightly controlled they are by the regulators."
They set maximum profits, not minimum, so it's hard to see what relevance your comment might have to the situation at hand, where the problem is excessive profit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There's nothing inherently wrong with people making money on this. Don't blame this on malice when incompetence would suffice.
Incompetence is malicious, and people making money are inherently disposed to wrong, which is why it is necessary to have a coercive system of laws and punitive enforcement.
This is why society punishes the greedy more than the charitable. Go to any prison, those who wanted stuff to settle their covetous desires far outnumber the charitable and compassionate.
Sorry, but you must have skipped Sunday school too often.
The fire must have stayed low and burned only the houses.
The solution to fires is to let tree farms go to old growth. Old growth are more resilient and resistant. And just get out of the way of fires. Live in temporary, natural shelters.
You don't see the contradiction within your sentence?
If CPUC sets their maximum profit, then how can the problem be excessive profit? Wouldn't the State set "maximum" prevent them from exceeding it in the normal course of operations, unless your postulating that the State sets their profit level at "excessive".
Anyway, PG&E went bankrupt before based on the "price fix the end rates, but let wholesale rates fluctuate" methodology of the State. They're now going bankrupt again because of their losses related to the fires. How exactly in your mind does "going bankrupt" equate to "excessive profits"? You don't think the shareholders of PG&E would prefer to not have their stock become worthless? That's what happens in a bankruptcy if the assets aren't enough to cover the liabilities. You really think a few years of dividends are going to make up for the massive loss right now?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
If CPUC sets their maximum profit, then how can the problem be excessive profit?
Because the CPUC is also corrupt. You look surprised. Someone should explain to you how the world works. Sorry your parents didn't, mine didn't either and I had to figure it out on my own by paying attention. Maybe you should try it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We got creimer here!
The CPUC is who I was blaming for the whole mess in the first place....
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.