Electricity bills in California — already among the nation’s highest — could soon skyrocket. In addition to killing two dozen people and destroying at least 12,000 structures, the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles have also damaged the region’s electrical system, writes Jason Plautz. Ultimately, ratepayers will foot the bill, said Travis Miller, a utilities analyst at Morningstar. And that is just one of the expected costs to residents. “Customers face a triple whammy here, with potentially higher insurance costs, higher utility bills and the recovery from property damage they suffered,” Miller told Jason. The total damage from the fires is expected to rise north of $250 billion — making it one of the nation’s costliest disasters. The state’s history of wildfires has already made its electricity more expensive than every other state except Hawaii — a reminder of the high financial costs that come with increasingly frequent natural disasters as the planet warms. Residential electricity rates grew by almost 50 percent between 2019 and 2023, far outpacing inflation. The California Public Advocates Office found that wildfire spending has been one of the biggest drivers of that growth. The area’s utility, Southern California Edison, could see even higher costs if it is found liable for the fires. Residents who lost their homes have already filed two lawsuits against the utility, alleging the fire was caused by the company’s electrical equipment. After the deadly Camp Fire in 2018, the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, filed for bankruptcy protection after investigators determined its infrastructure was responsible. Across the country, utilities are facing financial instability because of wildfires, forcing them to raise customers rates. But not everyone thinks it's fair for ratepayers to pay out for climate-driven disasters. “[W]e don’t talk enough about whether fossil fuel companies should foot the bill, especially when a significant chunk of the added risk can be attributed to them,” said Mark Specht with the Union of Concerned Scientists. The science advocacy group used attribution science, which aims to link human-caused carbon pollution to specific weather events, in a 2023 study on wildfires. It found that 37 percent of the forest land burned in the western U.S. and southwestern Canada since 1986 could be tied to emissions from the world’s 88 largest fossil fuel and cement companies.
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