Transition Finance Weekly - 10/17/2025
CA Utilities Can’t Bill Ratepayers for Lobbying; Sorry, Nobody Wants Your Coal; Alaska Indigenous Communities Reeling After Floods
Exploring the policy, politics, and economics of the clean energy transition
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1. California Bans Utilities from Spending Ratepayer Money on Lobbying
New law says companies can’t charge consumers for advocacy and promotional campaigns.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed AB 1167, barring investor-owned utilities from charging ratepayers for lobbying, political, or promotional spending, a practice that’s allowed utilities to pass millions of dollars in shareholder-serving expenses onto customers.
The law follows a series of investigations revealing that SoCalGas tried to pass $36 million in lobbying costs onto customers while fighting environmental laws, and that PG&E attempted to use $6 million in wildfire recovery funds to pay for image-burnishing ad campaigns.
Now, not only are these practices banned, but utilities also face caps on what they can charge customers for attorneys and expert witnesses when they’re seeking approval from the Public Utilities Commission to raise rates.
“Every day I hear from constituents who are struggling to pay their skyrocketing utility bills, and today we have finally put an end to the use of ratepayer funds for political and promotional activities that really benefit IOUs and shareholders,” said Assemblymember Marc Berman, who sponsored the bill.
2. After Montana Coal Auction Flops, Feds Reject Bid and Postpone Wyoming Sale
The feds may not understand how little coal is worth, but the market does.
Just a week after the first federal coal lease auction in a decade drew a single bid at less than a penny per ton, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has rejected the offer and postponed a similar sale in Wyoming, underscoring the industry’s steep decline, and raising new questions about the administration’s irrational energy policy.
Interior Department officials gave no reason for the postponement, saying only that a new date would be announced later, but the postponement coincides with the unmitigated failure of its attempted auction in Montana.
The administration’s energy priorities are increasingly at odds with reality. Navajo Transitional Energy, which submitted the lone Montana bid, has warned that the market value of coal in the region is dropping significantly.
3. Indigenous Communities in Alaska Reeling After Floods
The EPA cancelled a $20 million grant for flood protection in Kipnuk five months ago. This week, the Native Alaskan village found itself under water.
Last weekend, hurricane-force winds, storm surge, and flooding whipped across western Alaska. The villages of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok were hit dangerously hard, with flooding and wind damages that a Coast Guard official described as, “absolute devastation.”
As Alaska’s long winter approaches, food security is high on mind as part of the recovery. Many rural Alaskans rely on subsistence foods, like salmon, to make ends meet and when the storm came through, electricity outages caused freezers to fail.
The EPA said that the grant, which would have stabilized the riverbank now eroded by this storm, was “no longer consistent” with the EPA’s priorities as Administrator Lee Zeldin crowed about ending “wasteful DEI and Environmental Justice grants.”
Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski: “Whether you call it climate change or ‘once-in-a-generation’ extreme weather, no community in the wealthiest country on earth should lack the basic infrastructure needed to keep its people safe.”
4. Newsom Signs Insurance and Wildfire Bills — But Vetoes Key Community Hardening Measure
California moves to strengthen protection and resilience in the wake of accelerated weather-related strains to the insurance system.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed four major insurance and wildfire safety bills this month, advancing reforms aimed at stabilizing the state’s struggling insurance market and improving wildfire risk modeling and mitigation. But he also vetoed SB 616, a proposal that would have created a Community Hardening Commission to develop community-level wildfire resilience standards. He said it would have led to duplicative efforts, but the move disappointed some local officials and fire safety advocates.
Among the measures signed into law: AB 888, which creates the California Safe Homes grant program and the Sustainable Insurance Account within the state’s Insurance Fund; SB 429, establishing the Wildfire Safety and Risk Mitigation Program; SB 495, the Insurance and Climate Risk Market Intelligence Act; And SB 547, which extends insurance protections from residential to commercial properties.
Taken together, the new laws signal a commitment by the Governor and Legislature to modernizing California’s insurance oversight and wildfire policy, balancing immediate relief for property owners with long-term efforts to make coverage sustainable in a warming, more fire-prone state.
Senator David Cortese, who authored two of the bills that are now law, said: “This package ensures that our vegetation management projects protect biodiversity, our homes meet the highest fire safety standards, and our insurance system is transparent and fair for families across California.”
5. The Newest Big U.S. Coal Plant is Offline — Two Years and Counting
Sandy Creek exposes the limits of fossil fuels as “reliable baseload” power.
The Sandy Creek Generating Station, the newest major coal-fired power plant in the United States, is expected to remain offline until March 2027 following a catastrophic failure in April, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). The 932-megawatt plant, located near Waco, Texas, was completed in 2013 but has already experienced multiple extended outages, undermining the claim by fossil fuel advocates that coal provides steady, 24/7 electricity.
Sandy Creek’s two-year outage highlights the reliability risks of fossil-fueled power, especially as proponents of coal and gas continue to tout these sources as “dispatchable” and always available.
In reality, coal and gas plants routinely face both planned and forced outages. On average, coal plants are offline about 15% of the time, while gas plants are offline roughly 5%. When outages coincide with peak demand periods, they create price spikes and emergency grid conditions, as seen in 2021 in the Gulf Coast region during Winter Storm Uri.
SPOTLIGHT: What We’re Reading This Week!
A new Financial Times report lays out how mega-batteries are unlocking an energy revolution in California, where solar energy is the key to a renewable future — as long as it can be stored for when it’s needed.
California’s battery storage capacity has more than tripled to 13 GW, with plans for an additional 8.6 GW by 2027, thanks to supportive state policies. This surge in capacity means hundreds of battery installations are able to capture and store cheap, abundant midday solar power and discharge it in the evening when demand and prices peak.
This practice has fortified the grid, expanded the state’s use of renewable energy, and decreased its reliance on fossil fuels. California is leading the battery storage revolution, setting an example for the rest of the world. Global capacity is projected to increase by 67 percent to 617 GWh this year and to grow tenfold by 2035, according to energy research firm BNEF.
