Power Bills in California Are Sky High. Here’s What Lawmakers Can Do

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Written By Rainee Taylor

Voters are demanding action. The California Electricity Affordability Pathway will help legislators deliver. 

As California's gubernatorial race heats up, one issue is uniting voters: the rising cost of keeping the lights on. Power bills in California jumped nearly 50% between 2021 and 2025, and voters are fed up. The question is: How will Sacramento respond?

We hosted an exclusive briefing moderated by Jigar Shah where we explored what that polling reveals and discussed how state leadership can deliver on what voters want with legislation that’s on the table right now. 

If you couldn’t make it, here are some key insights from the discussion. And if you want to watch the briefing in its entirety, check it out on LinkedIn. 

California voters want action on affordability

Andrea Everett from Embold Research kicked off the briefing by providing an in-depth overview of the poll findings, which make it clear: California voters are facing an electricity affordability crisis that stands out nationally. Nearly 6 in 7 report that their bills have gotten higher, and 2 in 3 are very or extremely concerned about their electricity costs.

Californians are not just frustrated. They want their elected officials to do something about rising costs. In fact, more than 8 in 10 voters say reducing electricity bills should be a top or important priority for lawmakers–even after they were explicitly reminded of the many other critical issues California lawmakers must address. This is a rare example of an issue that transcends party, age, income, and utility region. 

Lawmakers can turn voter frustration into practical policy–now

Deploy Action is championing the California Electricity Affordability Pathway, a legislative package aimed at lowering electricity bills for Californians by: 

  • Holding utilities more accountable for rate increases;

  • Enabling smarter grid planning;

  • Expanding energy storage; and

  • Continuing investments in proven demand-side reliability tools. 

Deploy Action’s Executive Director Arnab Pal emphasized that these are systemic market reforms aimed at lowering distribution costs. For example, SB 905 (authored by Sen. Josh Becker) would require utilities to factor grid utilization into their planning, serving as a vital first step toward reducing costs by making better use of the infrastructure voters have already paid for. It’s all about squeezing more megawatts from our current system without hitting families with more rate shock. 

The package is also anchored by SB 1295 (authored by Senator Henry Stern), addressing distributed storage procurement reform and the Demand Side Grid Support budget and trailer bill effort (led by Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin and other policymakers). Together, these bills advance a practical, ratepayer-focused agenda to lower power bills without compromising reliability. 

This is an enormous opportunity for California

Former California state assemblymember (and Deploy Action co-founder) Phil Ting provided a useful analogy to illustrate the utilization problem: “The grid is no different than a football stadium, and as we know, a football stadium seats maybe 100,000 people, but they’re only using it 10 times a year.” 

Similarly, California’s grid is only strained about 40 hours a year. That’s less than 0.5% of the time. And yet we continue to “build baby build” expensive infrastructure exclusively for those rare peak hours. The California Electricity Affordability Pathway would help change that through utility incentives, so they are rewarded for grid efficiency rather than just building more physical infrastructure.

“This is a real opportune moment to bring our utility market into the 21st century. We are the heart of the innovation economy. We’ve launched all these green jobs. We have the technology right here in California,” Phil emphasized. 

Take a deeper dive

To go into more depth on what we covered during this exclusive briefing: 

Rainee Taylor
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Deploy Action Poll Shows California Voters Want Grid Efficiency, Utility Accountability, and Lower Power Bills