Bill Clerico, founder of Convective Capital, discusses the necessity of higher electric rates in high wildfire risk areas to fund grid safety upgrades.
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: Regulators, not utilities, block wildfire infrastructure investments
“And so there's sort of this, I think, ill-informed narrative that the utilities don't want to spend the money.
They actually love to spend the money and they would die to spend that money.
The issue is the regulators and the ratepayer advocates that basically …”
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.”