by Audrey Carleton at Vice
The California utility responsible for the deadliest fire in the state’s history is planning to bury 10,000 miles of power lines as it ramps up for what experts are predicting to be a disastrous wildfire season.
Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), California’s monopoly utility, announced on Wednesday its multi-year plan to mitigate wildfire risk by undergrounding a fraction of its wires in high-risk regions of the state at a massive cost that will be pushed to consumers.
The goal is to prevent the company’s aging electrical equipment from breaking or faulting and sparking fires that could easily ignite trees and vegetation across the drought-gripped west coast state. The entire project will cost between $15 and $30 billion, which will be paid for by customers, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
“We want what all of our customers want: a safe and resilient energy system. We have taken a stand that catastrophic wildfires shall stop,” PG&E CEO Patti Poppe said in a press release. “We will partner with the best and the brightest to bring that stand to life. We will demand excellence of ourselves.”
The announcement comes less than a week after...
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