CPUC Commissioner: 'Creating a new risk evaluation paradigm' in the face of California's wildfires
By Clifford Rechtschaffen, Commissioner at the California Public Utilities Commission
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As the Commission has increasingly made safety an overriding priority in recent years, we set out to create a new risk evaluation paradigm.
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The decision we voted out will transform how California energy utilities make decisions about spending on safety risks. Utilities will now be required to evaluate risks in a much more transparent, uniform and quantitatively rigorous way.
They must use data, rather than subject matter expertise, when available, and clearly describe their inputs and computations. They must perform a far more thorough and exacting quantitative analysis to determine and compare risk reduction benefits from various mitigation measures, including the relative efficiency of their risk-reduction spending. They will also be required to publicly present their analysis identifying their top risks and seek input from interested parties and [Commission] staff.
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The Commission will in turn be able to evaluate the mitigation measures the utility has proposed, the specific risk drivers these measures address and the relative cost efficiency of those measures, compared both to other mitigation programs that reduce wildfire and other top-ranked risks identified by the utility. This will allow us to better evaluate the individual wildfire safety mitigation programs against one another, as well as whether the utility is adequately planning to mitigate safety risk across its enterprise.
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