(Bloomberg) — California’s largest utility sees energy demand doubling by 2040, driven by artificial intelligence, electric cars and other efforts to electrify more of the economy, PG&E Corp. chief executive said.
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PG&E is equipped to meet that rising demand without significantly expanding its fleet of power plants, Chief Executive Officer Patti Poppe said Friday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. This is because the utility’s system is not functioning optimally.
“Our network is underutilized today,” she says. “We built the power grid years ago, and now we get to use it.”
Utilization rates on PG&E’s network are currently around 45% and Poppe said she sees that growing to as much as 80%. While there will be “a new generation,” the CEO said better use of existing assets will be key to delivering more power without driving up costs.
Shares of PG&E fell 0.9% at 10:46 a.m. in New York. The stock is up 1% this year.
Other parts of the US are also predicting a huge increase in energy demand, with the head of the grid operator in Texas estimating this week that energy demand there would almost double by 2030. A number of U.S. energy companies have also dramatically increased their demand forecasts. , although other companies, unlike PG&E, plan to build new plants.
Forest fires
PG&E is also taking steps to prepare for wildfires. PG&E has equipped two Black Hawk helicopters with 1,000-gallon tanks, which can be filled with water or fire retardant, to fight the fires in California. The utility owns two other Black Hawks that are used for construction, such as installing poles and towers.
Poppe has pledged to prevent catastrophic wildfires, which forced the utility into bankruptcy in 2019 after its equipment sparked some of the worst fires in California history. More than a hundred people were killed and thousands of homes were destroyed.
The utility says it has reduced ignitions associated with its equipment by 68% since 2017 by installing more weather monitoring stations, hardening poles, covering and burying power lines and preemptively shutting off power during dry and windy weather.
–With help from Josh Saul.
(Adds shares in fifth paragraph. An earlier version corrected the spelling of the CEO’s name.)
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