PG&E customers should know that natural gas rates will increase if the California Public Utilities Commission approves PG&E’s latest proposal. The request would cost consumers nearly $1 billion more collectively in monthly gas bills over the next three years.

By 2017, consumer gas bills would be 45 percent more than they were in 2013.

Monthly gas bills combine three cost elements: transmission and storage, which involves major transportation pipelines and storage tanks; distribution, which concerns the local pipelines that deliver gas to the homes of consumers; and commodity, which refers to natural gas fuel used by furnaces, hot water heaters and stoves.

PG&E asserts that it needs to upgrade its transmission and storage system in order to ensure safe, reliable gas transmission and storage, and will therefore need to raise the transmission and storage cost element by 13 percent in 2015, an additional 1 percent in 2016 and an additional 3 percent in 2017.

Similarly PG&E plans to upgrade its distribution system, and to do that has proposed raising the distribution cost element by 17 percent in 2014, 3 percent in 2015 and 3 percent in 2016.

This is in spite of the fact that PG&E customers have already paid $300 million in increased rates during 2012-2014 for PG&E’s failure to properly inspect, test, repair, and keep records for its gas pipelines.

The approval of these rate hikes would put the burden of paying for this failure squarely on the shoulders of consumers. If the CPUC grants this increase it could open the door for similarly huge increases for SoCal Gas and SDG&E customers.

However, PG&E customers still have time to speak out against the rate hikes. The CPUC is holding Public Participation Hearings in Oakland, Aug. 26 and in San Francisco on Aug. 27.

Can you really make a difference? There is power in numbers, and the more people that show up to speak out about current economic hardships faced by both businesses and residents, the more impact customers will have.

For more information, contact Ana Montes at TURN, amontes@turn.org or call (415) 929-8876.