Earlier quoted context omitted.
He also made that point. But his point here is that if we’re willing to assign liability to PG&E for damages from a brushfire sparked tomorrow... if in your mind PG&E is truly responsible for any resulting death or destruction if a tree falls on their transmission lines during a time of critical fire risk and sparks a blaze.... then it is not only prudent, but it would be morally and economically imperative to shut d…
One person floods a basement with gasoline. Another comes in and throws a lit match on the floor. Who’s responsible for the fire? It’s an interesting question. At the same time, while it’s statisticslly likely that fires would happen with our without PG&E, we can’t escape the fact that they’ve been responsible for quite a few of them. Paradise, California, was built very close to the wildlife-urban interface. And our…
They spend billions of dollars on maintenance each year, so obviously they prioritized fixing whatever all the equipment that they did actually fix that year.
PG&E knows about tens of billions of dollars of infrastructure which is past its useful life. Towers built in 1910s and 1920s which are so old it’s hard to even get up on them to patch them. Towers they don’t even know what year they were even built.
Rates are set in a political environment and those rates pay for supply, maintenance, clean energy enhancements, and dividends.
Why weren’t rates set higher? What percent of rate revenue was spent on shifts to renewables? Why not go after that spending as well as dividends? Dividends were 1/15th of the revenue, to put it in perspective.
As to your bridge analogy;
> The U.S. has been underfunding its highway system for years, resulting in a $836 billion backlog of highway and bridge capital needs. The bulk of the backlog ($420 billion) is in repairing existing highways, while $123 billion is needed for bridge repair, $167 billion for system expansion, and $126 for system enhancement (which includes safety enhancements, operational improvements, and environmental projects).
https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/roads/funding-futur...