Which is why utility companies get tax breaks, direct tax funding, and legal monopolies.

What you’re saying is the current system of zero risk, high gain, is acceptable.

In this case pg&e deliberately chose not to perform maintenance on their lines, despite turning a profit (meaning they could afford to do more) and despite receiving tax payer money specifically for the purpose of that maintenance.

Instead the issued dividends to private people and orgs, and to executive bonuses.

Those people have now have that money, a lot of which already came from taxpayersz the same tax payers that have now been left with the bill for damage caused by pg&e not doing what it had agreed to do.

That is a pretty canonical example of heads I win, tails you lose.

In fact as long as companies are allowed to behave like this (eg with no criminal liability in management), there is no downside to this kind of theft.

Utilities do not generally get tax breaks, or direct funding. What they do is endure regulated rates and low profit margins in return for a low risk business (e.g. getting a legal monopoly). Forcing them to bear massive, unlimited risk, while having their rates regulated to ensure modest profits totally breaks the model.

At the end of the day, we depend on private capital to build our electric grid. It’s not public money building power lines and transmission stations. There is a business case for investing in a utility, where you might eke out 5-10% profits, but are guaranteed that your business won’t be obsolete tomorrow or be in the hook for huge liabilities. That can be an alternative to investing in say something like Facebook where you’ve got 25% profit margins but a business that could be obsolete in face of the next new thing. Low profits and massive risk of your shares becoming worthless makes it very unattractive to investing in that infrastructure.

The "private capital" you're talking about is largely on top of the massive funds from government sources. In most countries it was entirely built out by central governments.

Re: taxes - please look at your line items and notices the various "fees" you're charged.

I think the problem here is that you believe that utilities should be generating massive profits. Given they're backed by the state - PG&E literally got laws made to retroactively reduce their liability - then any profit that they make or distribute is tax payer money.

Let's put this super simply:

Let's say the company makes $X a profit, and distributes $Y to shareholder and executive remuneration (annually).

After N years they have made N$X, given out N$Y to owners, etc, their bank balance is Z=N($X-$Y) (obviously exact amounts change year to year, but we're being simple here). If Z is less than 0 then they've been running at a loss for N years, and we'd have no problem saying they should go bankrupt - they would have long since lost the ability to get loans, etc.

Now, let's say this is a public utility, then their annual profit is made up of:

1. Revenue in the form of below market resources costs (e.g. they don't pay market rates for land) 2. Revenue from state granted fees 3. Other tax related subsidies

So lets put these altogether and say $X = (actual profit) + $T (T=tax payer).

So after N years, they've received N$T funds. So if their bank balance is below $T, and $Y is greater than zero, they have been running at a loss, and they've been paying out the owners with tax payer money. Eg. they are taking tax money that is intended to support the utility and divesting it.

This is what PG&E did.

They took fees, and they took tax payer money. Then they "reduced" their expenses by reducing maintenance. That gave them a "profit" they divested to private interests. Now, when the costs of their failure to maintain infrastructure came due they couldn't afford it. Which means they're now taking even more tax payer money. Even if the company is taken apart, that money doesn't cover the costs they have inflicted.

I believe may be confusing investor-owned utilities like PG&E with government-owned public utilities. PG&E does not receive taxpayer money. They are a private company such that their entire revenue stream is dictated by a government commission [1]. The commision-fixed pricing benefits the consumer because we pay less than what electricity is "actually worth". The drawback is that PG&E cannot afford to mitigate risks such as forest fires. Presumably, if the "true price" of electricity included the costs required to prevent forest fires, it would be significantly higher.

[1]https://www.energy.ca.gov/pou_reporting/background/differenc...

As far as I can tell PG&E hasn't paid dividends since 2017. Legal monopolies also come with burdens. PG&E is disallowed to refuse service to high-risk regions. When they shut down power to places during high fire risk, the company receives penalties. It's a difficult trap. If you reduce exposure to risk, you reduce income - which further hampers ability to provide a safe service.

At the end of the day, people can't eat their cake and have it too. When delivering power to high risk areas, either of two things happen: either we accept the danger, or the utility charges higher rates to offset the risk of damage. There's no magic solution. A government take over of PG&E isn't guaranteed to change anything, other than making the taxpayers directly liable for any mishap.

That would make it a mere 7 years after the failure to maintain pipeworks results in an explosion that killed 8 people.

It also didn’t stop giving bonuses to the executive board that make the budgetary decisions.

This is also a glib dismissal of the effects of decades of under maintenance resulting in ever increasing costs to bring things back in order. Essentially deferring maintenance until the point of failure, at which point you declare bankruptcy and get bailed out by the people you defrauded.

There isn't zero risk the shareholders of PG&E lost 80% of the value of the stock since 2017.

Since I analysis systems for a living and for fun, it would be interesting to look at PG&E books. How much maintenance was deferred? It is possible to properly maintain their equipment with the current rate structure?

Maybe the company was put in an impossible situation by the Public Utilities Comission.

The shareholders made huge returns in the prior decades. So how much of that loss was a correction caused by the market realising the way historic profits were created was going to start costing shortly?