Commentary: California utilities have lofty climate goals. Too bad their customers are in the dark

Andrew Heath, Los Angeles Times on Jan 14, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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Regardless of the presidential election results, the clean energy transition is still a major priority for the nation’s electric utilities. Perhaps nowhere in the world is the pressure more intense than in Southern California, where the demands on the power grid are high and many residents are well acquainted with the consequences of aging, unsuitable infrastructure.

Many electric utilities now consider sustainability crucial to their overall strategy. However, as evidenced by countless examples of conservatives being elected on anti-environmental platforms, the majority of consumers just aren’t thinking that much about clean energy.

For the past four years, my team at J.D. Power and I have been analyzing customer awareness of and support for utilities’ climate programs and goals in an annual Sustainability Index. Without fail, we found that very few customers have any awareness of their utilities’ clean energy goals. This year’s index found that just 22% of customers knew their utilities had such goals, a figure that was even lower in previous years.

I experienced one aspect of this phenomenon as a consumer when I went through the grueling process of learning about and applying for California and federal rebates for an energy-efficient heat pump system I installed in my home last year. Even though I wrote about that ordeal for The Times and heard from consumers who had similar experiences, I have yet to get any response from my utility. Heat pumps have been a cornerstone of clean energy transition efforts, but when it comes to installing and using them and understanding their benefits, utilities are leaving consumers on their own.

A deep dive into my combined electric and gas bills showed that my total expenses dropped 3% in 2024 compared with the same period in 2022, before I began installing the system. And because average unit electricity prices increased by more than 20% in the interim, my adjusted heating costs are down more than 23%. In addition, I now have the benefit of air conditioning during summer heat waves, which I did not have prior to the conversion.

But before I could even begin to understand the extent of these benefits, I had to download reams of data from Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s data hub, build a spreadsheet to organize and chart my energy use and utility billing trends, and cross-reference everything with federal greenhouse gas equivalency calculations. Does anyone think an average consumer would go through all this?

The experience illustrated the chasm between the way utilities communicate about environmental responsibility and the way consumers live it. The fact is, if any utilities are ever going to meet their sustainability targets — many of which call for reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 — they are going to need their customers to change their behavior. But given that few customers are even aware of these priorities, and that most are far more concerned about affordability than they are about sustainability, there is a complete disconnect between utility and customer goals.

But these goals can be aligned if the companies explain and promote them clearly and convincingly. We’re living through a historic transformation that has the potential to reinvent heating and cooling, travel and more. Smart-grid technologies can put individual homeowners at the center of the energy storage and transmission system. None of that will happen without massive consumer buy-in.

Utilities should be launching bold outreach strategies, investing in customer education on how to save money (and pollution) by adopting new technologies, and making it easy for consumers to help them reach their environmental goals. But most utilities are instead wasting their time talking about lofty sustainability targets that lack the substance and support they need to become reality.

Electric utilities have a huge opportunity to help customers save money and improve their experience, increase their own revenue and meet their clean energy goals. To do so, they need to start understanding and communicating effectively with their customers.

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(Andrew Heath is the vice president of utilities intelligence at J.D. Power.)

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