Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and founder of the Pacific Institute in Berkeley, California told CNBC, “This is a utility owned by shareholders that is shifting risk from its own corporate entity to the public. It’s shifting risk to individual homes and businesses that lose power and then can’t operate. Are we now living in a society where fundamental basic services are cut off regularly to protect corporate interests? They can’t impose this burden on people.”
On the other hand Jack Brouwer, an engineering professor and director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine, commented, “There are lives at stake. I can’t over emphasis the calamity that these events cause at the neighborhood level. Hundreds of health care facilities don’t have back-up generators. If you’re out of power for an hour, that’s fine, but for a couple of days — those lives count as much as those that would be lost in a fire.”
Gov. Newsom wants PG&E to issue rebates or credits to customers
In a letter to PG&E CEO Williams Johnson on Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom reiterated that the “scope and duration” of the previous power outage was “unacceptable.” He added that it was a “direct result of decades of PG&E prioritizing profit over public safety, mismanagement, inadequate investment in fire safety and fire prevention measures and neglect of critical infrastructure.”
