Senate committee hears CPUC, CEC annual updates as electricity bills rise

Chair Becker convened the Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications for its first hearing of the 2025–26 legislative session to receive annual updates from the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Energy Commission and to focus on rising electricity bills.

The meeting opened with Alice Reynolds, President of the California Public Utilities Commission, and David Hochschild, Chair of the California Energy Commission, presenting data and analysis on why residential and commercial electric rates have climbed and what the state and regulators can do in the near and longer term to ease bills while meeting clean-energy goals.

"The largest driver in recent cost increases is ... distribution costs, including wildfire mitigation costs, like vegetation management, installing covered conductor, undergrounding, and other measures," Alice Reynolds told the committee, summarizing CPUC analysis of investor-owned utilities' revenue requirements. Reynolds said wildfire-related requests have been substantial: "In the five years…