With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

California’s public utilities must do more than check compliance boxes—they must embrace a culture of prevention and accountability before infrastructure failures turn into community disasters.

By Soovya Nagin and Kipp Mueller

Public utilities occupy a unique and powerful position in California. They operate essential infrastructure, serve millions of people and provide a service most residents cannot live without. But unlike ordinary businesses, they do not operate in a traditional competitive free market. Most customers do not meaningfully choose the electric utility that maintains the poles, wires, substations and equipment serving their community. If confidence in that utility disappears, the ratepayer usually cannot take business elsewhere.

When a company controls essential infrastructure and serves captive ratepayers, market pressure alone cannot be expected to keep safety at the center of every decision. A restaurant that repeatedly cuts corners may lose customers. A contractor that performs unsafe work may lose future jobs. A public utility, by contrast, often continues collecting from the same ratepayer base regardless of whether it performs its work in a reasonably safe manner.

That is why regulation and accountability are so critical in this industry. They are part of the bargain that allows utilities to operate as protected, essential service providers. With monopoly-like power comes a responsibility that exceeds ordinary private business obligations.

California law reflects that bargain. Public Utilities Code Section 451 requires every public utility to furnish and maintain adequate, efficient, just and reasonable service, equipment and facilities necessary to promote the safety, health, comfort and convenience of its patrons, employees and the public. That is not merely a paperwork requirement. It is a public safety mandate.

The wildfire statutes are even more direct. Public Utilities Code Section 8386 requires each electrical corporation to construct, maintain, and operate its lines and equipment in a manner that will minimize the risk of catastrophic wildfire. The same statute requires wildfire mitigation plans describing the preventive strategies and programs the utility will use to reduce that risk.

Those plans matter. So do inspections, vegetation-management programs, reporting obligations and agency oversight. The Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety now reviews electrical corporations’ wildfire mitigation plans, safety culture assessments, safety certifications and executive compensation structures. The creation of a separate department devoted to utility-related wildfire risk reduction confirms the obvious: ordinary regulation was not enough for the danger California faces.

But compliance still cannot be treated as the finish line. A plan can be filed. A report can be submitted. A box can be checked. The harder question is whether the utility acted reasonably in light of risks that were known, knowable and foreseeable. In wildfire country, that question cannot be answered by asking only whether the minimum standard was technically satisfied.

CAL FIRE's list of the Top 20 Most Destructive California Wildfires underscores the stakes. Eight of the listed fires are identified as powerline or electrical fires: Camp, Tubbs, Valley, Witch, Woolsey, Nuns, Dixie and Thomas. Together, those fires destroyed tens of thousands of structures and caused substantial loss of life. The point is not that utilities cause every wildfire. They do not. The point is that when electrical infrastructure fails under extreme conditions, the consequences can be catastrophic.

That reality changes how safety should be evaluated. Regulatory compliance is often backward-looking. It asks whether a utility met a defined requirement at a particular time.

Public safety requires a forward-looking culture. It asks whether the utility is continuously evaluating risk, replacing aging infrastructure, hardening systems, improving inspections, learning from near misses and prioritizing prevention even when prevention is expensive.

Granted, utilities operate in a difficult environment. Climate conditions, vegetation, wind events, aging infrastructure, affordability concerns, and grid reliability are all constant and conflicting challenges. But complexity cannot become a shield from responsibility.

"With great power comes great responsibility" may be familiar, but in the public utility context it is more than a slogan. It captures the bargain at the center of regulated utility service. Utilities receive protected service territories, ratepayer funding and authority to operate infrastructure the public depends on. In exchange, they must be held to obligations commensurate with that power.

That means not just punishment after disaster. We have to change incentives before disaster strikes. We need to incentivize proactive and robust maintenance and inspection of utility infrastructure rather than a mere slap on the wrist for public utilities that are found to have ignored their obligations under the Public Utilities Code and Public Utilities Commission General Orders.

Ratepayers already bear much of the burden. They pay utility bills, fund infrastructure investments, endure planned power shutoffs, absorb rising costs and live with the consequences when safety systems fail. In return, they are entitled to more than technical compliance. They are entitled to a utility culture that treats prevention as the primary objective.

As wildfire risk continues reshaping California, the legal and policy focus should remain clear: compliance is necessary, but it is not enough. The ultimate measure of utility safety is not whether paperwork was filed, a plan was approved or a minimum standard was met. The measure is whether preventable harm was actually prevented. When whole communities can be wiped out by failures in essential infrastructure, prevention must remain the goal. Accountability helps ensure it does.

Kipp Mueller is a partner, and Soovya Nagin is an associate at Brent & Fiol, LLP.