At the beginning of Sept. San Francisco offered to buy Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) electrical grid in the city for $2.5 billion. The energy giant filed for bankruptcy in January, after historic wildfires ravaged California, leading to billions in liability cases against the company. At the time city attorney Dennis Herrera told reporters, "There has been a lack of investment in infrastructure over the course of the last decade by PG&E. And that is, and was, motivated primarily by pursuit of profit. That's not something that San Francisco is going to be pursuing. We're not interested in profit. We're interested in providing safe affordable power to ratepayers rather than trying to make sure that stockholders are getting some great rate of return on their investment."
On Monday, Reuters reports that PG&E CEO Bill Johnson replied to the San Francisco offer with a letter of his own, saying “Although we cannot accept your offer, we want to clearly communicate that PG&E intends to continue working with the City to best serve the citizens and businesses of San Francisco. Mayor London Breed and attorney Dennis Herrera, who sent the initial offer to the energy company, said they were not surprised by the response, but would continue trying to get control over the city’s power grid.
After being convicted of felony obstruction “of knowingly failing to inspect and test its gas lines for potential dangers,” PG&E continued to choose to pad their executives’ bonuses and shareholder prices instead of upgrading their infrastructure and performing speedy safety analysis of their power grid. Those decisions have led to forced blackouts affecting millions of people.