Bill Clerico, founder of Convective Capital, challenges the narrative that electric utilities are unwilling to invest capital in grid modernization and fire mitigation.
Opinion
Clerico: Wildfires Surged Due to Forest Management and Grid, Not Climate
“The reason that wildfires really reached a crescendo in the last 10 years, in my opinion, is not because of climate change, it's because of things like forest management, it's because of the way we've constructed our electrical grid, sort of more acute, self-i…”
Opinion
Clerico: Electric bills must rise to reflect California wildfire risk
“The cost of energy generation is sort of artificially low right now.
It does not reflect the risks of wildfire.
And so it probably means that electric bills need to go up, particularly in sort of high fire risk areas to fund a lot of this capex.”
Insight
Clerico: Prescribed burning creates asymmetric job risks for California fire chiefs
“If you're a local burn boss or fire chief and you want to do a prescribed fire, You know, it is the right thing to do, but it's kind of risky. If it escapes, if it burns someone's property, if you start the next, you know, Palisades fire, you know, you're gonn…”
Insight
Clerico: Palisades Water Failed From Plumbing Depressurization, Not Supply Shortage
“The water issues were related to there's three, one million gallon tanks as houses burned down, the plumbing opens. If you've got like a five eighth or half inch plumbing connection into a house, that's going to run at 20 or 30 gallons a minute. You have 500 o…”
Insight
Clerico: Regulated utilities profit by marking up CapEx 15% to ratepayers
“If, you know, PG&E spends five billion dollars undergrounding lines or upgrading transmission lines,
They get to mark that up by 15% and pass that through to ratepayers.
They love it.
That's how they make money.”
Assertion Partly supported
Clerico: 98% of Climate Capital Goes to Mitigation, Only 2% to Resilience
“You know, I think if you look at climate capital that's deployed, 98% of it goes into what's called mitigation. So reducing CO two, two percent of it goes into resilience and adaptation.”