By Bridgett Ennis, co-founder of ChavoBart Digital Media, an audio and video production firm with a focus on scientific and environmental media. Originally published at Yale Climate Connections.
Most people don’t spend much time thinking about their state’s public utilities commission – if they’ve even heard of it at all. But these regulatory bodies, made up of just a few hundred commissioners across the country, make decisions that impact the cost of your monthly utility bill, the types of energy powering your home, and the future of the electric grid itself. In an era of rising electricity demand and an urgent need for clean energy, public utility commissions hold immense power over how states navigate the energy transition.
Charles Hua, founder of the nonprofit PowerLines, sat down with Yale Climate Connections to break down who these commissioners are, how they make decisions, and why the public’s engagement – or lack thereof – can shape the future of our energy system.
This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.
Yale Climate Connections: Who are the state’s public utilities commissioners, and what kinds of decisions do they make?
Charles Hua: There are [about] 200 state public utility commissioners across the country – every state has [a commission]. In about 40 of the states, they’re appointed – usually by the governor – although in a couple of states, it’s by the legislature. And then, in about 10 states, they’re elected.
These 200 people oversee more than $200 billion a year in utility spending. So that includes what types of energy generation utilities invest in, from coal and gas to solar, wind, and nuclear. In some states, they have authority over where clean energy projects are sited and permitted, and they oftentimes have some level of control over transmission in terms of the siting authority of new power lines.
They also determine how much people pay for their utility bills – they set electricity rates. That’s particularly important because one in three Americans struggle to pay their utility bills. So there’s a massive affordability crisis that’s only going to get worse, especially as we expand and modernize our grid infrastructure.
So these 200 people are really important. And I think we need to view them as the Supreme Court justices of the energy space in terms of the impact that they have over the decisions that we are concerned about and ultimately need to see progress on.
Editor’s Note: Public utility commissions oversee all capital and operating expenditures for investor-owned utilities. The capital expenditures for investor-owned utilities are estimated to be over $200 billion in 2025, and the amount is substantially greater when operating expenditures are included. Hua clarified by email that he likes using the “200 people oversee more than $200 billion in utility spending” because it’s a helpful mnemonic to help folks remember and it provides a conservative estimate.
YCC: Can you put the public utility commissions’ work into the context of the larger transitions that are happening now?
Hua: The stakes cannot be higher at this particular moment. With the rise of AI and data centers, as well as the onshoring of manufacturing, electricity demand in the U.S. is increasing at a faster rate than since the 1990s. And that growth in electricity demand means that we will need to build significantly new resources to power that demand.
Now the question is, what kind of resources are we going to invest in? And if you look at what’s being proposed right now, it is largely a combination of renewables, but also a significant amount of new fossil gas capacity.
And we have a significant challenge ahead of us, which is the potential for retrenchment on these clean energy and climate targets. I think it’s critical, especially in this context, to realize that every other country is very much looking at what the U.S. is doing to respond to this moment. And if other countries are looking at the U.S. and saying “If the U.S., one of the wealthiest countries in the world, can invest in new fossil resources to meet growing demand, why can’t we do that as well?” And so there’s a huge need for everybody to just be aware of the dynamics that are at play.
And this space is changing rapidly. So the bottom line is we need to operate with a deep level of humility and strategy while still being confident that we can actually grow our economy, serve the needs of our most vulnerable communities, and power the electricity needs of our society.
YCC: Can you walk me through the different ways that the public can engage with public utility commissions?
Hua: There are two particularly important types of proceedings, called dockets, that public utility commissions engage in that represent opportunities for people to engage: integrated resource plans (IRP) and rate cases.
An IRP is a plan by which utilities propose how they will invest billions of dollars over a certain time frame, generally around 15 to 30 years. Most states have an IRP, and they usually have to update it every two to five years. And this is basically where they say, “This is how we want to invest our money in transmission, distribution, and all different kinds of generation assets.” And then the regulators have to ultimately look at their proposal and say, “This makes sense. This doesn’t make sense. Let’s do more of this. Let’s not do that.” So the regulators have a key role – they’re essentially grading the homework of utilities. And so that’s why having really strong, robust, healthy regulators and regulatory infrastructure is so critical.
Another type [of proceeding] is called rate cases. When a utility needs to increase or – more rarely – reduce rates, they have to go in front of the commission and say, “Look, we need more money because our capital expenditures on this increased or our operating expenditures on, let’s say, tree trimming was more than we expected.” So anytime that they’re looking to increase or reduce rates they have to go in front of the commission and get approval.
Sometimes engaging means actually showing up in front of the [public utility commission] but there are many different ways for people to engage. Arguably, the best way to engage, particularly if you’re just getting started, is to find a group that’s already engaged at the commission and figure out how you can support their efforts.
YCC: What are some of the barriers that prevent people from making their voices heard with public utility commissions?
Hua: First is that the vast majority of Americans aren’t even aware of what a [public utility commission] is. Nobody should know what a [public utility commission] is – it’s like the offensive lineman in football – if you hear about them, frankly, it’s probably because something went wrong.
But even if you’re aware of it, oftentimes they meet [during the day] when you’re working, and you’re not going to stop working to show up at a hearing. Even if you did, there’s a portion where you can provide public comment, but in many states, there’s no legal requirement for the commissions to actually listen to that and incorporate that into the case. Other times, they want to listen to and incorporate it, but legally, they’re not allowed to. So even if you have a supportive commissioner, that’s an issue.
But let’s say all that happened. How does a commissioner weigh the evidence of a single member of the public relative to a utility company that’s running and operating the grid assets? Are you going to somehow be able to convince the regulator that you know more about reliability than they do?
So that is not to say that showing up publicly does not have an impact. It absolutely does. There are many instances where public participation has resulted in reduced rate hikes, significantly more favorable policies for things like solar panels on your roof, and other smart, common sense measures like energy efficiency.
It’s also a question of being strategic about who is showing up in front of these commissions and what you can do to align with other folks and bring new members into this broader coalition of folks who are engaged. It can’t just be climate advocates; it needs to be a broad swath of people who are impacted by [public utility commission] decisions, and frankly, that cuts across political ideology in most instances where people just want affordable, reliable, and generally sustainable electricity.
YCC: Can you give an example of a situation where community input made a difference?
Hua: There are a lot of examples of community engagement that’s really worked in lockstep with the [public utility commission] to advance positive outcomes. I’ll give you one example that’s occurring right now in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts is an interesting state when it comes to these sorts of issues because there’s a huge appetite from a public policy standpoint for electrification, for greater adoption of heat pumps. There’s a significant population that’s on delivered fuels right now, which is one of the most expensive ways to heat homes, and a significant proportion of the population is on the gas system in Massachusetts. Absent financing solutions or financial support, electrifying is often difficult financially.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities has been working in partnership with community advocates to advance an energy affordability and burden docket. They’re actively investigating how the state can reduce energy burden by looking at what the state can do around rate design and how different rate structures can lead to different outcomes from an electrification and equity standpoint.
And so that’s an example where there’s a healthy level of community engagement that’s working in lockstep and in tandem with the government entities involved in moving those issues forward.
YCC: What do you want the average person to know about how commissions impact their daily lives?
Hua: There’s a deep irony here where [public utility commissions] are one of the wonkiest things in this whole climate and energy space. But [public utility commissions] directly impact people’s personal pocketbooks, livelihoods, and material conditions. These public utility commissions set the rates, determine your utility bills, and have the power to make sure that utilities are making investments that actually result in better consumer outcomes and more clean energy deployed on the system.
So at minimum, you should look up who your home state’s public utility commissioners are and get a sense of what types of decisions they make, how they impact different conditions in your state as it relates to implementing your state’s clean energy policies or setting your utility rates or expanding our grid infrastructure or anything of that sort.
But as we face unprecedented increases in electricity demand over the next couple of years, the decisions that these 200 people make will have a tremendous influence over what the future of our energy system looks like, particularly because there’s a chance that the energy infrastructure we build as a society [will last] 30, 50, 80-years and be locked in all the way to the end of the century.
And so if we don’t pay attention to what investments these utility companies are making – and the public utility commissioners are approving – then we have a chance to either hit our clean energy targets as a society or to go wildly amiss. And I think it’s incumbent on all of us to have some level of awareness of these decision-makers so that we can make sure that they’re ultimately held accountable to the public interest and making sure that they are doing everything that they can to advance a more affordable, reliable and sustainable energy system for us all.
Tools and further reading
Public utilities commission: structures and members by state
NAACP guide to engaging public utility commissions
State utility commissions are one of several components of electric utility regulation, performance standards and rate setting. In general their impact is greatest in the delivery portion of your bill; this is mostly the lower voltage distribution infrastructure.
Independent System Operators are market operators of generation and transmission for least cost dispatch and impact the bill in the supply or system benefits charges. Many people select suppliers that supposedly guarantee rates or deliver “green” electricity, etc.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (with Regional entities below) are the other pieces of regulation. FERC largely outsourced most regulation to the NGO NERC (think SEC and FINRA). They have major impact directing capital investments, rates, siting of transmission and generation and the operating standards.
If you look at major blackouts, or the Heathrow outage, these are events that *should* be prevented with resilient infrastructure directed by a FERC, NERC or ISO type organization. Widespread storm damage or rotting distribution lines (think California fires, Hurricanes, ice storms) would be likely a state PUC matter.
The big push for EVs, heat pumps, chip fabs, etc will create huge stress at all levels of the grid. Accommodating these demands is a huge deal and all levels of regulation are woefully unprepared and in many cases simply incompetent. The tightly regulated, state level, vertically integrated monopoly (or better yet, a public asset) is a far better model.
I like your response, but might argue that while managing power as a public asset is far better than capital and market driven systems, but is not immune to bad decision-making, ala the 2001 West Coast Energy Crisis, worsened by BPA’s issuance of over 3000 MW in cheap, federal power contracts than it could produce, leading to a very tight market helping Enron et al. fleece California.
Here in Wisconsin, our power is provided by a state-sanctioned monopoly, called We Energies. They raise rates when they want to, without giving the public real explanations -or deigning to, first, cut executive salaries. Here, the regulatory body is called the Public Services Commision. I’ve sat in front of them before; they seem to me rubber-stampers. At times, we’ve organized groups for public testimony before them, to tell them about people who can’t afford to plug in their medical devices, to tell them about mothers who make the ‘heat or eat’ choice. They don’t care; they don’t run in our circles. During one rate hike in, if i remember, 2022, an older woman got up and testified as to her and others reliance on the income from investing in We; times being tough, the rest of us ought to turn off our CPAP machines and whatnot. This all aside from the ridiculousness, from an environmental, or a longer-term human perspective, of “on-shoring” and drives for increased manufacturing of useless or destructive products in the face of an industry-precipitated climate collapse.
I feel your pain. It’s cold comfort, but we in Northern California have the same thing: PG&E and the CPUC – in bed together to terrorize their unwilling hostages (the ratepayers) for record breaking profits, poorly maintained equipment that causes fires/deaths and the villains are held unaccountable, the highest rates in the nation…..and now, drum roll, please….they want another 10% rate hike.
The CPUC and its antecedent organizations has been corrupt and essentially owned by, or at least in service to, the electric industry since the beginning of the 20th century. Want to get angry? Read more about the century of greed and the backstabbing of the public interest.
California state government is contested terrain, and the PUC is not an exception.
In defense of the CPUC, it has both complaint reporting and public hearings on matters before it, and the Commission does feel the heat when the public complains. I used the complaint lines to exert pressure on SCE when they improperly denied me lifeline low-income rates and lied to me about the rules some years back, and it worked. California’s long history of popular and labor agitation has had a positive impact on the PUC.
I have some family history here, because my Dad was an Administrative Law Judge at the CPUC during the 70s and 80s. He reported zero overt corruption, but definite political intervention at the upper level. The CPUC has a staff of many technical analysts to provide expertise, and they always seemed to do that well by his account. But there was another staff as well — the staff attached to the individual Commissioners — that was used for cases of political interest. Every now and then, a case would come up — intrastate trucking deregulation was one — where everyone knew what the decision would be in advance, put forward by the Commissioner’s staff, and handed to a picked ALJ. Back then, electric and telephone rate cases weren’t as contentious as they are now, and they were usually decided on a pretty open process. But I suspect that has changed.
But there is also the history of wholesale, high-level corruption in the CPUC. PG&E’s long capture of the state’s Republican and Democratic politicians has been a central feature of that. California investor-owned utilities will do anything to retain their position, and they do. The US Supreme Court decision instructing San Francisco to form a public electric utility under the Raker Act has never been executed, and under the Willie Brown mayoralty they arguably rigged an election to avoid doing so.
PG&E’s killing of 8 people in the San Bruno gas pipeline explosion saw it convicted of felony violations, but not before it conferred with a PUC Commissioner about shopping for the right judge for the trial. No executives were charged, even though the violations were willful and involved obstruction of justice — the PUC did fine them 1.6 billion, and a PUC President did note that PG&E’s profitability made them virtually untouchable. The massive fires a few years later killed more people, but PG&E survived like a zombie, even after two bankruptcies. The judge in one case called them “a recalcitrant criminal.” No PUC action to stop this.
I laugh when California is described as a left-wing paradise. The corruption comes from the top, and it will be relevant if Gavin Newsom runs for President. When Newsom was treated to a dinner party that violated Covid rules it was paid for by a PG&E lobbyist after Newsom had engineered a fire bailout bill for utilities into law. I await Newsom’s bid for the Presidency.
A few additions: the paradise fire killed something around 100 people while it was on probation from the gas pipeline explosion.
That alone should have been the end of PG&E.
The governor appoints the CPUC members.
The first PG&E bankruptcy in 2000 ish, and how it was handled got the dem governor recalled and replaced by the terminator.
PG&E was newsoms largest donor and also gives millions to his wife’s charity. The dem stooges in CA just supported newsom, it was crazy to watch.
And yes the governor had the legal power to end PG&E and take it over as a state entity and turn it into a state agency or spin it off as a COOP. Of course he didn’t.
While COOPS are not a fool proof solution they are probably the best option.
And oddly or not coops are mostly in the middle of the country with mostly red states/areas and they have usually the most reliable and least expensive energy.
The three biggest lies:
I won’t *** in your mouth.
The vaccine will give you immunity.
Electricity will be too cheap to meter.
In Oregon the PUC has a roll with water and electric and also has a role with natural gas and telecommunications. Some additional duties you might not expect – like the “Call before you dig” safety program (811) and the Board of Maritime Pilots (think Columbia river). Gas and telecommunication are both currently more contentious than water and electric. Current commissioners are appointed by the Governor.
The levels of political contention in Oregon utility regulation might follow from utility ownership — in most of Oregon, water and electricity are from publicly owned entities (with the notable exception of PGE in Portland, and Pacific Power in some other towns).
I can’t speak for all 50 states…but in my neck of the woods, there are 4 components: the actual electricity, the delivery, the meter charge (the fixed cost you gotta pay even if your usage is 0), and govt-mandated taxes and fees.
ironically the electricity part is the most transparent (IMO). the other 3 parts have so much obfuscation, the potential for grift is high—particularly when “green fees” get enacted but it becomes a honeypot for greenwashed grifting
How much do you pay for the meter?- In Spain it is about 0,89€/month. Kind of forced rent. If a meter costs, let’s say 100€ it should be amortized in about 9 years.
18 USD per month (residential, much higher for commercial) r , which is why all large, old-line utilities have split into two discrete comapnies, one for generating power, one for the rentier delivery
Wide variance among the states. I’m not in the best state, certainly not in the worst.
The natural gas “meter fee” is worse (35+ usd)….the state electricity board and local electric mega-utility are paragons of virtue and competency when compared to the natural gas companies and natgas regulators
Splitting into different business units is an artifact of deregulation directed at the state level. In the late 90s NYS utilities were forced to divest generation and become “wires” companies. Thus, there is a separate delivery and supply charges, with much lower transmission (billed as system charges) and metering. We have PV and net metering (surplus now through November is accumulated and drawn down in winter), our monthly rate is $17.68 which amounts to a connection fee.
That’s it exactly. Most of the cost is for the connection and other b.s. charges, not the actual electricity usage.
I have an ancient central air system that I decided to never use after day 1 in the house I bought 5 years ago. It’s still hooked up to the electric with its own box switch on the outside wall. I keep it around, however, in case the utility would ever want to give me a discount for them ‘turning it off’ during peak usage times.
Don’t you have another “power term fixed cost”? In Spain if you have, lets say, a 5kW contract you pay a fixture for that. Double if you have a 10kW contract, regardless of what you consume. If you surpass your power fixture during a significant time lapse the meter shuts down the power in your house. This is the part that utility companies would like to rise the most and when the conservatives were in power in Spain it certainly surged significantly.
No, most of the US (perhaps almost all) does not have tiers of meter/delivery fees—-for residential accounts, tiers (like you describe) can happen with commercial-industrial users.
One could make the argument that tiers of meter fees are “more progressive” , but as you say the reality can turn out differently.
Having grown up in Nebraska I can tell you it has public power. When I was young some politicians and business people would ocassionally push to privatize it but the general public actually like having a public utility so it’s not politically feasible to dismantle it. There are elected commissioners at the company and I suppose they set the rate, but it’s not a for-profit company so it’s a little different than the other states.
Here’s the Omaha’s public power company wikipedia page:
There is a public utilities commission of sorts but they regulate different utilities.
Nebraska Public Service Commission wikipedia page