Climate

Electricity is one of those things that should be run by the municipality. Their incentive wouldn't be to maximize shareholder value, but to deliver a basic need reliably and at the lowest cost possible. At the very least, it needs to be run by a Public Benefit Corporation.

The minute you enter private enterprise into it, things go pear-shaped. A municipal power network wouldn't have problems with solar or distributed neighborhood grids. It just means lower cost for them, so they would encourage it.

They would need to get economies of scale, though. So you can't have it just be city-wide or county by county. It has to be statewide. That way you can spread out the risk and costs. It also means investing in rural wiring since it's no longer a matter of ROI.

Same for gas, clean water, sewage, and broadband. This isn't closet socialism. We currently do this for roads, freeways, state parks, postal service (sorta), and defense.

Over the long term, Electricity will go down and gas will go up. You could put your thumb on the scale by directly subsidizing your bill if you get a heat pump. Rooftop solar helps here too

In much of California, it's not the electric energy costs that are high, it's the delivery/grid fees. Not that it matters as far as the electricity bill goes, but it's worth noting.

On my recent bill I paid 16¢/kWh for on-peak electric generation and 49¢/kWh for electric delivery. (There's a small baseline credit for delivery so it's a little more complicated, but you get the idea.)

So if someone tries to tell you electricity is expensive because CA is a hippie state with lots of solar, I would be a little skeptical.

We are being raped by PG&E. Now they get $24 just because we are connected to them. PG&E needs to be taken over.

Same goes for PHEVs. You face the choice of charging your car or running off gas and California is making it hard to choose to charge.