Essential Industries Need Affordable Power to Compete
CLECA member companies produce goods essential for daily life — the oxygen in hospitals, the steel required for seismic support, the cement in critical infrastructure. For many of them, electricity is their single largest operating expense. Affordable rates, reliable supply, and workable decarbonization policy decide whether that production — and its jobs — stays in California.
California Industrial Rates vs. Neighboring States
The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s most recent data on average industrial electricity prices shows California at nearly three times the rates of every neighboring western state — and well over twice the national average. These are the states that compete directly with California for industrial investment, manufacturing jobs, and the clean-energy production the state’s own climate goals depend on.
Source: U.S. EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A — average industrial price by state, March 2026
Goals for Industrial Ratepayers
CLECA’s advocacy at the CPUC, CAISO, CEC, CARB, and California Legislature centers on three interconnected priorities: making electricity more affordable, making the regulatory process more accountable, and expanding the options available to large industrial customers.
Improve Affordability
Eliminate programs that are not cost-effective. Remove social program costs from rates and fund them through non-ratepayer sources. Authorize alternative financing for capital investments. Time grid investments to align with load growth. Support development of ROWE to reduce costs through expanded western electricity markets.
Improve Accountability & Transparency
Require a rates report at each CPUC meeting before commissioners vote. Focus the CPUC on General Rate Cases; limit proliferating proceedings and balancing accounts. Limit rate changes to three per year. Develop affordability metrics covering all customer classes.
Improve Industrial Customer Opportunities
Expeditious implementation of large power dynamic rates. Streamline permitting and interconnection for members to install their own generation — relieving grid stress and improving system resiliency.
Where CLECA Advocates
The goals above are carried into specific venues and fights. These are three of the fronts — the full set of positions, each drawn from CLECA’s filing record, lives on the advocacy page.
General Rate Cases
Intervening at PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E to challenge excessive spending, scrutinize A&G cost allocations, and protect the industrial rate class.
Read Our Positions →Wholesale Markets & Resource Adequacy
Engaging demand response integration, Resource Adequacy design, and ROWE formation to ensure expanded western markets deliver cost reductions.
Read Our Positions →Direct Access & Rate Design
Protecting Direct Access rights, opposing unreasonable exit fees and PCIA reform, and advancing cost-causation rate design.
Read Our Positions →Essential Production. Every Day.
EAF rebar production, rolling mills, galvanizing lines, and steel pickling — continuous high-voltage operations.
Energy-intensive clinker production serving California’s construction needs.
Production of oxygen, nitrogen, argon, hydrogen, and CO₂ for hospitals, medical care, and manufacturing.
Glass bottle manufacturing — energy-intensive furnace operations running continuously at high load.
Beverage production and bottling plants requiring continuous, reliable electricity throughout California.
Aggregate and specialty mineral production serving California’s supply chains.
Temperature-controlled food distribution infrastructure, around-the-clock.
Transportation fuels infrastructure — including jet fuel and renewable fuels — serving California’s industrial and commercial needs.
CLECA Supports the ROWE and West-Wide Market Development
The Regional Organization for Western Energy (ROWE) is a newly formed 501(c)(3) non-profit created to provide independent governance over voluntary energy markets across the western United States — including the Western Energy Day-Ahead Market and the Western Energy Imbalance Market. Representing Step 2 of the West-Wide Governance Pathways Initiative, ROWE is designed to be an entity with independent governance capable of offering an expansive suite of west-wide, voluntary wholesale electricity market functions across the largest possible footprint.
CLECA has been an active supporter of the Pathways Initiative and the ROWE formation process. Expanded western electricity markets have the potential to reduce production costs, improve resource adequacy, and provide California’s large industrial customers with access to more affordable and reliable electricity. A well-designed ROWE with strong public interest protections and meaningful C&I customer representation is essential to realizing these benefits.
With California Assembly Bill 825 enacted in 2025, ROWE is now in its implementation phase — working to seat an initial board, develop tariff amendments, and establish the legal and organizational structures for a fully functional organization by January 1, 2028.
CLECA has advocated throughout the Pathways process for a designated Large C&I customer sector on both the Stakeholder Review Committee and the Nominating Committee — recognizing that large industrial ratepayers represent a distinct set of interests that must be represented in ROWE’s governance structures. An independent market monitor, transparent stakeholder processes, and equitable treatment of all load types are central to CLECA’s engagement.
Sponsoring Solutions in Sacramento
CLECA doesn’t just react to energy policy — it writes it. Two CLECA-sponsored bills are reshaping how California supports industrial energy efficiency and industrial decarbonization.
Industrial Energy Efficiency Financing
Restructures California’s industrial energy efficiency program so the efficiency charges industrial customers pay come back to them — as matching grants for real decarbonization and efficiency projects at their own facilities, measured against real-equipment baselines.
Industrial Process Heat Recovery
Exempts qualifying zero-emission industrial process heat recovery generation from nonbypassable and departing-load surcharges — removing a rate-design penalty on manufacturers that turn their own waste heat into clean power.
Latest from CLECA
Recent Filings & Proceedings
Briefs & Settlement Comments in PG&E Rule 30 Proceeding
CLECA is contesting the application of data-center-grade risk-mitigation requirements to Decarbonizing and EITE existing industrial customers, and defending customer data confidentiality under Public Utilities Code § 8380.
Comments on the Cap-and-Invest 15-Day Modifications
CLECA urged timely adoption of the amendments, supporting the improved Cap Adjustment Factor trajectory and the restructured Manufacturing Decarbonization Incentive that EITE facilities need to commit decarbonization capital.
Testimony in PG&E General Rate Case
CLECA witnesses submitted testimony challenging PG&E’s proposed 2027 General Rate Case, addressing A&G costs, capital expenditure justification, headcount efficiency benchmarks, and rate allocation impacts on industrial customers.
If Electricity Is One of Your Largest Costs, You Should Have a Seat at the Table
CLECA gives California’s large industrial energy consumers a unified, technically grounded voice in every venue where electricity costs, energy supply, and decarbonization policy are decided.
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