Fighting for Affordability: OCPA’s Push for Legislative Solutions to Electricity Affordability

By Steven Halligan

At the Orange County Power Authority, we take seriously our responsibility to deliver clean, reliable, and affordable energy to the communities we serve. But affordability isn’t a local issue we can solve alone – it’s deeply shaped by decisions made at the state and federal level.

This summer, OCPA has been actively meeting with members of the California Legislature, sharing the urgent need for meaningful action on affordability. We’re joining with our fellow Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs) across the state to support a series of key legislative and regulatory efforts that would help keep costs down for all California energy customers, especially those most vulnerable.

Why Affordability Is at Risk

Several external factors are driving up energy costs for Californians:

• Depletion of the Wildfire Fund: The state’s insurance mechanism designed to cover utility wildfire liabilities is at risk of running dry. If this fund is not replenished, utilities may need to pass wildfire costs directly onto customers—a move that could increase bills statewide.
• Federal Changes via H.R. 1 and Tariffs: At the federal level, the passage of H.R. 1[1] and Tariffs could significantly change how transmission and energy projects are sited and who pays for them.

Without action, these cost pressures will disproportionately hurt working families and undermine the clean energy transition we’re all working so hard to accelerate.

What We’re Fighting For

OCPA is advocating for the passage of several key bills and proposals that address the affordability crisis head-on:

• Assembly Bill 825 (Petrie-Norris): This bill includes provisions which prevent utilities from earning profits on the first $15 billion they spend on undergrounding power lines, sets up a public financing program to help fund new transmission projects at lower cost, creates a task force to evaluate energy efficiency and demand-side programs for customers, launches a new program to help local governments permit clean energy projects with expert support and incentives, and updates the state’s wildfire safety planning requirements.
• Senate Bill 254 (Becker): This measure includes various proposals to address electric utility bill affordability, including electric transmission infrastructure financing, permitting and deployment; permitting of clean energy infrastructure, including energy storage facilities; and various proposals to address electricity utility bills, including prohibiting equity rate basing by electrical corporations of $15 billion in capital investments.
• Senate Bill 540 (Becker): A foundational piece of legislation to advance regional energy market integration. As part of the broader “West-Wide Governance Pathways Initiative,” this bill positions California to collaborate across Western states in a way that improves grid reliability and reduces ratepayer costs by better sharing resources. A regional market could create $800 million per year in benefits according to a recent Brattle Group study. [2]
• Cap & Invest: Cap and Invest funding should be focused on helping California make this transition affordably both through lowering energy bills and the upfront cost of clean technology.
• Slice-of-Day (SOD) Resource Adequacy (RA) Market Reform: Provide regulators with the necessary tools to optimize hourly resource adequacy obligations. By allowing trading load obligations, load serving entities could avoid $105 million in purchases of excess RA resources in 2025 alone. [3]

These measures offer practical, immediate relief while also strengthening the long-term structure of our energy system to prioritize both equity and resilience.

A Fairer Energy Future Requires Sacramento’s Leadership

As we tell our story to lawmakers, we make one thing clear: OCPA and our fellow CCAs are not just energy providers – we are public agencies created by communities, for communities. Every dollar we save through smarter procurement or policy reform goes directly back into lower customer rates and local programs.

But we can’t shield our customers from rising costs alone. California must act now to blunt the impact of increasing wildfire liabilities, federal cost shifts, and structural inefficiencies in the energy sector.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1

[2] https://www.brattle.com/insights-events/publications/preliminary-day-ahead-market-impacts-study-impact-of-market-footprints-on-california-customers/

[3] https://cal-cca.org/ra-transactability/

About Orange County Power Authority

The Orange County Power Authority is a not-for-profit public agency that offers clean power at competitive rates, significantly reducing energy-related greenhouse emissions and enabling reinvestment in local energy programs. To learn more, visit www.ocpower.org.