electrification – Enviro Updates

Mad about the Bay Area gas water heater ban? Here’s what you need to know

June 27, 2026

Sam Fishman, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Every year we delay the electric transition, more money flows from Bay Area households into gas infrastructure that fewer and fewer people are using.

You’re paying more on your home gas bill this year than you were last year. And the year before that. And the year before that.

In fact, Californians are paying nearly 50% more per unit of gas than five years ago — even as the average household uses 12% less. Demand is falling. Bills are rising. Something is very wrong.

Part of it is obvious: methane gas is a volatile commodity. Californians learned this the hard way in winter of 2022-23, when a perfect storm of unusually cold weather, low natural gas storage levels, and pipeline infrastructure constraints sent prices soaring to five times the national average. More recently, the Iran War has caused natural gas prices to spike in Europe and Asia.

But there’s a hidden story that explains the majority of what you’re paying for on your gas bill.

California’s three largest gas utilities have doubled their pipeline asset spending from $27 billion to $57 billion — replacing pipes at $3 million to $5 million per mile. Utilities get to recover those costs by raising rates, which means higher bills for Californians. Today, about 60% of your gas bill goes toward pipelines, operations and shareholder returns — not actual gas. Forty years ago, it was the reverse. Californians are funding a pipeline empire that keeps growing, even as electric appliances like heat pumps surge past gas.

How electric utilities could revive their sagging fortunes and decarbonize the country

David Roberts, VOX
These are gloomy times for electric utilities. After more than a century of fairly steady and predictable growth, they have entered stagnant waters. Demand for electricity is sluggish. Distributed energy resources (solar panels, batteries, etc.) are chipping away at their market share. Climate activists are always yelling at them for burning so many fossil fuels. It’s no fun.
Despite the industry’s much-hyped “death spiral” — in which customers abandon utilities for distributed energy, prices rise on remaining customers, more customers leave, etc. — these troubles are probably not fatal. Even under aggressive projections, most electricity will come from utility-scale power plants through the middle of the century. Utilities will still be needed. But they do seem to be heading inexorably toward a much-diminished role, with much-diminished profits.

Still, buck up, utility execs, all is not lost! There is a possible future in which utilities become bigger and more important than ever. What’s more, it is a future in which they take the lead in decarbonizing the country.

They could be heroes.

That is the good news in a recent paper from research consultancy The Brattle Group. It outlines a scenario in which utilities thrive, greenhouse gas emissions decline, and everyone joins hands in song.

The key to everything (coincidentally, my long-time obsession) is electrification.