From Public Power San Diego
If past form holds, Sempra Energy’s annual earnings announcement Tuesday, Fe. 25, won’t be highlighting the massive profits it records from SDGE, one of its largest subsidiaries.
Sempra will instead bury SDGE’s huge profits by including them with earnings from other businesses.
But SDGE’s profits can still be found in Sempra’s legally required filings. After reporting $670 million in profits through the first three-quarters last year, it’s likely SDGE will report annual earnings last year of about $900 million.
“It’s a simple formula,” said Bill Powers, a board member of Public Power San Diego. “SDGE charges the nation’s highest rates and that results in enormous profits. Every dollar of those profits came out of our pockets.”
No digging is required to determine the profits at any of California’s more than 40 public utilities, added Powers.
“That’s because public utilities don’t seek profits. Customers at those public, non-profit utilities pay substantially less for their electricity.”
SDGE’s high rates are a significant contributor to our region’s high cost of living, which city leaders have called a crisis. Last year, for example, SDGE’s profits amounted to more than $600 per customer, adding a large burden to hard-pressed households.
So there’s good reason for Sempra to distract attention from SDGE’s huge profits. But more and more people understand those profits come from the pockets of San Diegans. And growing numbers of people recognize that non-profit, public utilities charge lower rates because they don’t seek profits or pay massive salaries to top executives.
Public Power San Diego is campaigning to create a non-profit, affordable electric utility in the City of San Diego.
In comparison to SDGE, a non-profit, public utility would save billions of dollars in the coming years, while emphasizing clean energy generated within city limits and respecting all labor union rights and contracts.
By emphasizing locally-generated clean energy – rooftop and parking lot solar– a non-profit, public utility in San Diego would be less dependent on long-distance power lines and less vulnerable to failures of those transmission lines, which also present serious fire-hazards.
Emphasizing locally generated power, along with battery storage, would also help save more precious backcountry open lands from development for energy projects.
“The non-profit Public Power San Diego seeks to create will do what is says – it will eliminate the profit,” said Powers.
“We don’t have to pay exorbitant rates to fuel exorbitant profits. We can have clean, renewable, locally generated electricity, provided by union employees at much lower cost.”
In effect, SDGE also forces local utility customers to invest in climate-damaging natural gas. That’s because SDGE transfers its profits to Sempra Energy, which owns the utility. And Sempra continues to invest billions of dollars in building facilities to export fracked gas, a climate-damaging fossil fuel.
These investments of utility customer money in fracked gas are in direct contradiction to local and state policy, which aim to reduce dependence on fossil fuels to relieve the climate crisis.
The Public Power San Diego campaign is an initiative by utility customers, union supporters, and energy experts, as well as environmental and community groups.
The campaign encourages utility customers in the city to visit its website http://publicpowersd.org –– and learn how to be a part of the movement to bring lower rates and clean, renewable power to San Diego.
Are we really going to regurgitate this lame duck excuse for city mismanagement again?
Yes and you are going to pay your $50 a month to have your trash picked up!!! Get in line Chris and do as you are told.
If anyone thinks that SDG&E has anything to do with utility prices, I have Florida to sell you. Sacramento controls EVERYTHING.
I agree that there ought to be a public power option, however I have to tell you that I have great reservations on the city’s ability to run it. As it stands, city leadership fails miserably at meeting the needs of its constituents. All you need to do is look at the deficit we face, the roads in such bad repair, horrible police response times, the homelessness crisis we continue to face, etc.
I know I am sick of paying the highest rates in the county to Sempra Energy / SDGE.
Here’s another article from VOSD that may interest you:
“No matter which way you slice it, San Diego has the most expensive electricity in the country”.
https://voiceofsandiego.org/2023/08/29/san-diegos-eye-popping-electricity-rates-get-national-notoriety/
What erks me is that to go public, we have to buy all the telephone poles, wires and other infrastructure, even though it was our money that allowed them to buy the equipment. So we have to buy it twice. Unless we can change some law. Still, absolutely worth it. To those blaming Sacramento and Local government mismanagement, the main mismanagement is not having it public, already. This article is correct, SDG&E is raking it in…because they have a monopoly. This is also part of the reason we have so little industry in the area covered by SDG&E. They can’t afford the highest electrical rates in the country.
Yes, there are some other reasons we pay more, like the botched upgrade to San Onofre, and high rates for obsolete reflector solar. But, high profits are obvious contributors.
I am very in favor of free markets…just not with natural monopolies, or where the consumer has little choice like when driven by ambulance to a hospital. You don’t get to choose the hospital and there is not “competition” really. The doctors choose what you are buying. Without true competition, and transparent prices, free markets are not really “markets” at all.
Corruption rules! Wake up sheeple!
I support a public option for power in San Diego. I agree that Sempre Energy / SDG&E are soaking the public, as well as the city. The only problem is, I do not trust local government officials to run it efficiently and without corruption. After all, look at what they have done to San Diego in the last ten years! Streets are in poor condition, homelessness still rampant despite all the money we threw at it, the ash street debacle, taking out perfectly good traffic lanes to replace them with useless bike lanes, etc.
The city needs to be out of the power business, the trash business, especially the water business. I’d like to see a comprehensive review (pure water included) as to how we’re paying more for receiving less. Subsidies to the general fund. 80% of street repairs are slurry sealed I believe I read here..