Electricity rates are on the rise across the country, but nowhere has the increase been more precipitous than in California, where average residential rates surged 47 percent from 2019 to 2023, and are now twice as high as the national average.

Experts point to increased utility spending on wildfire safety and recovery measures, distribution infrastructure and to a lesser degree, clean energy programs, as some of the reasons for skyrocketing power prices in the state.

But recent analyses also show another trend—a growing gap between the rates charged by investor-owned utilities and those of publicly owned electricity providers. That’s happening in many regions of the country, but especially in California, where average rates for the investor-owned utilities Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E

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