California’s average industrial electricity rate stood at 20.06 cents per kilowatt-hour in March 2026, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Electric Power Monthly — compared with 7.96 cents in Oregon, 7.66 cents in Nevada, 7.16 cents in Idaho, 6.85 cents in Washington, and a national average of 8.58 cents. For the steel mills, cement plants, gas producers, and food-chain infrastructure that CLECA represents, that differential is not an abstraction. It is a line item — often the single largest operating expense — that competitors in neighboring states simply do not carry.
Why the gap matters beyond the bill
CLECA members are large, high load factor, high voltage customers. They take service at transmission or primary voltage, run continuously, and impose less cost per kilowatt-hour on the system than almost any other customer class. Under cost-causation principles, their rates should reflect that. Increasingly, they do not: costs for wildfire mitigation, public-purpose programs, transportation electrification, and other policy initiatives are spread across volumetric rates in ways that bear little relationship to who causes the costs.
The consequence is what economists call leakage. When production moves to states or countries with cheaper power — and, frequently, weaker environmental standards — California loses the jobs and the tax base while global emissions stay flat or rise. CLECA members are formally recognized by the California Air Resources Board as Emissions-Intensive, Trade-Exposed (EITE) industries precisely because of this dynamic.
What CLECA advocates
Across proceedings at the CPUC, CAISO, CEC, and CARB, CLECA’s affordability agenda is consistent: eliminate programs that are not cost-effective; fund social programs through non-ratepayer sources; time grid investment to actual load growth; adopt cost-causation rate design grounded in long-run marginal cost; and support expanded western electricity markets through ROWE, which can lower production costs across the region.
The same agenda now extends to industrial decarbonization. CLECA’s recent filings argue that California’s current rate design structurally discourages the industrial electrification the state says it wants — and that rate reform, not new ratepayer-funded subsidy programs, is the path to making industrial decarbonization economically rational.
Rates that are uncompetitive drive investment decisions, hiring decisions, and ultimately production location decisions out of California.
For the underlying data, see the EIA’s annual sales, revenue, and price tables. For CLECA’s positions in specific proceedings, visit our filings library and policy positions.