PG&E Prepping Filing Outlining 5,000 Undergrounding Miles by 2037
PG&E Corp. leaders will later this year propose a 10-year plan to underground about 5,000 miles of infrastructure at high risk of fires as they look to add to work that will have buried roughly 1,900 miles by the end of next year.
Patti Poppe, the CEO of PG&E, told analysts and investors after the utility reported its first-quarter results that teams are on track to file their plan with the Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety during the third quarter. The proposal will cover the years 2028 through 2037 and will be submitted under guidelines revised by the California Public Utilities Commission late last year.
PG&E teams have been among the utility sector’s most ambitious in wanting to underground wires and other infrastructure, in part because the company has been particularly severely affected by recent wildfires. (As of year-end 2025, executives estimated that PG&E’s aggregate liabilities from 2019 Kincade fire, the 2021 Dixie fire and the 2022 Mosquito fire topped $3.8 billion.) Executives in 2022 proposed undergrounding about 3,600 miles by the end of this year but a compromise with the CPUC trimmed that number a year later.
Poppe also told analysts that the work already done to underground about 1,240 miles has helped the company defray more than $100 million of spending on maintenance. And she added that the envisioned 10-year plan would require about $1 billion in capital annually.
Other items of note from PG&E’s first-quarter report—which was highlighted by $885 million in net profits, up from $607 million early last year—included:
- Data center developers’ interest in building in PG&E’s service territory has picked and Poppe said it is expanding beyond the Bay Area. A big factor is the growing realization that California has unused capacity: “We still have a job to get the word out that California is open for business,” Poppe said. “We’ve added 33 gigawatts of capacity to the California grid and we’ve got 22 gigawatts more under contract for the next four years. […] We really have an opportunity to serve these large-load customers and I think word is getting out.”
- California Independent System Operator officials recently awarded 25 transmission planning projects worth a combined $4.16 billion. Poppe called the decision “a big improvement” for the company, adding that, “I think there was a period of time where the CAISO was not sure that PG&E could follow through and do these transmission projects at this scale. And their determination certainly has shown that they have confidence.”
Shares of PG&E (Ticker: PCG) were changing hands around $16.60 on the afternoon of April 24, the day after executives’ earnings report. They’ve risen slightly over the past six months, which has grown the company’s market capitalization to about $36.5 billion.
About the Author
Geert De Lombaerde
Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications T&D World, Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, FleetOwner and Oil & Gas Journal. With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati and later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector as well as many of its publicly traded companies.