Pacific Gas and Electric Company filed a proposed 10-year Electrical Undergrounding Plan with California’s Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety on October 1, outlining a risk-based strategy to bury approximately 5,000 miles of electric distribution lines from 2028 through 2037 in high wildfire-risk areas across Northern and Central California.
PG&E estimates undergrounding would reduce wildfire ignition risk by nearly 98 percent and cut outages by 90 percent on the affected lines, delivering long-term benefits valued at $117 billion — more than ten times the proposed investment — including about $6 billion in avoided vegetation-management, operations and maintenance costs over the assets’ lives. The company says new technologies have cut its undergrounding cost per mile by about 25 percent.
Regulatory approval is the gating item: Energy Safety must determine the plan substantially increases reliability and reduces wildfire risk, after which PG&E will seek conditional cost approval from the California Public Utilities Commission. The filing lands weeks after PG&E said it would defer about $2 billion of 2027 investments under a strategic review — investors will watch whether the undergrounding capex survives that discipline. PG&E shares gained 1.23 percent to $12.32 on October 2 when the plan landed.