CA gas utility infrastructure aging and expensive, study shows

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(The Center Square) – California, like the rest of the country, is paying more to maintain its gas-powered utility infrastructure as the Golden State transitions to a more electrical-powered utility system, New research by U.C. Berkeley shows.

That research, published by the Energy Institute at U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, shows that nationally, gas utility lines are aging and getting more expensive. Many places choose to pay to replace them, which means digging up the street, replacing the pipeline and then paving over the new line. That can cost between $1 million to $10 million per mile, the research shows.

The professor who conducted that research, Meredith Fowlie, did not respond to The Center Square for this story.

In California, where private electric and gas companies dominate the utility landscape, records show it costs hundreds of millions of dollars for those companies to replace gas pipelines, including gas mains. Documents submitted by PG&E to the California Public Utilities Commission in 2025 show that the company paid more than $653 million on a per-year average between 2021 and 2024.

Representatives from PG&E did not immediately respond to The Center Square on Thursday confirming those numbers.

“When we talk about utilities and energy costs, we’re 50% higher than the national average,” Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, told The Center Square Thursday. “There’s a lot of mandates that come from this legislature to put more restrictions and more regulations on anything that we move forward. So I’m not shocked that it’s more expensive.”

Fowlie’s research also shows that in some places, gas lines are repaired rather than replaced. That can be cheaper, but repairs don’t last as long.

“Really, it comes down to the point of who pays for it,” Strickland told The Center Square. “I’ve been saying for 20 years that we haven’t invested in our infrastructure and that we haven’t invested in our utility lines.”

Across the country, replacing gas utility systems costs American taxpayers roughly $37 billion annually, according to Fowlie’s research. While it’s not clear how much of that figure is directly paid by California’s utility ratepayers, that study shows that American taxpayers will finish paying off investments related to replacing gas utility infrastructure in the 2080s or later.

Strickland said that as the state’s gas utility system ages, he is concerned about California’s big push to transition to fully-electrical utility infrastructure, which Gov. Gavin Newsom has advocated for in his time in office.

“The worst thing that can happen in California is everybody buy an electric car and plug it in at the same time,” Strickland said. “We don’t have enough electric capacity. Even if we expand electric capacity, we can’t get it to population centers because we have ailing infrastructure.”

Democratic lawmakers who sit on utilities-related committees in the legislature did not respond to The Center Square on Thursday.