- The video discusses the issues surrounding electric utilities, including their high rates and scandals.
- It highlights the case of Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), which caused the deadly 2018 Camp Fire in California.
- Utilities operate as monopolies, giving consumers no other choice for electricity providers.
- Utilities have incentives to increase spending and stifle innovation to maintain their profits.
- The video mentions a church in North Carolina that challenged the monopoly by installing solar panels, leading to a legal battle with Duke Energy.

- Duke Energy in North Carolina shut down a church's solar arrangement and prevented similar arrangements in the state.
- Public utility commissions in many states are ineffective in regulating utilities.
- Mississippi Power had massive cost overruns on a plant due to lack of due diligence by the commission.
- Alabama's state commission has been described as politically motivated and environmentally hostile.
- Ohio's First Energy funneled money to politicians to pass a controversial energy bill.
- PG&E in California is responsible for numerous fires due to lack of maintenance.
- PG&E's profits are tied to building new infrastructure, not maintaining it.
- PG&E issued billions of dollars in dividends to shareholders instead of performing maintenance.

- PG&E, a utility company in California, prioritizes shareholders over customers and has a history of negligence.
- Elected officials in California, who receive money from PG&E, do not hold the company accountable.
- There are limited options for customers to address the issues with PG&E.
- A possible solution is to make utilities publicly owned and run by the government, but it would be expensive and unlikely to happen soon.
- Performance-based regulation and increased support for regulators are other steps that can be taken.
- The return of Reddy Kilowatt, a mascot representing the horrors of utility companies, is suggested.

- The video discusses the issues with electric utilities, including high rates and scandals.
- It focuses on the case of Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) causing the deadly 2018 Camp Fire.
- Utilities operate as monopolies, limiting consumer choice.
- Utilities have incentives to increase spending and stifle innovation for profit.
- A church in North Carolina challenged the monopoly by installing solar panels, leading to a legal battle with Duke Energy.
- Public utility commissions in many states are ineffective in regulating utilities.
- Examples of commission failures include Mississippi Power's cost overruns and Alabama's politically motivated commission.
- Ohio's First Energy funneled money to politicians for a controversial energy bill.
- PG&E in California neglected maintenance, causing fires and prioritizing shareholders over customers.
- Elected officials in California who receive money from PG&E do not hold the company accountable.
- Limited options exist for customers to address issues with PG&E.
- Possible solutions include publicly owned utilities, performance-based regulation, and support for regulators.
- The return of Reddy Kilowatt, a mascot representing the horrors of utility companies, is suggested.

John Oliver discusses the incredible amount of power we give electric utility companies, how weakly regulated they are, and why they get such bad Yelp reviews. 

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Our main story tonight concerns utilities.

The company's responsible for delivering us power and also giving us the creepiest mascot ever created, Reddy Kilowatt, a hell creature who for decades appeared in ads for over 200 electric companies like this 1 about him emancipating woman in the home.

And this 1 where he tells a housewife, don't kill yourself, it ain't worth it.

Reddy even appeared on children's shows where he undoubtedly gave a whole generation nightmares.

Ha ha ha, you should know that you can expect anything to happen here, Mr.

Boy, I'll say, hey, What's happening now?

Those peanuts, they're floating in the air.

That's the only time I've ever been scared for a clown.

We can't actually show you the rest of that video, because, and this is true, If you watch it until the end, Reddy shows up behind you and brutally murders you.

Now, you probably don't give too much thought to your local electric utility, but if you do, it might be because they're charging exorbitant rates for a basic human necessity, as this North Carolina pastor explains.

1 of the founding members of this church, Sister Linda Jones, she literally cut her pills in half, skipped days in order to pay her light bill.

And there are hundreds of people right around here who need that help.

And in case it bumped you at all, you're right, that was a property brother that you just spotted there.

He made a documentary about utilities, and it's actually pretty good to the point that you're even gonna see a little more of it later on.

And if you're wondering which property brother that is, I'll give you a clue, it is the circumcised 1.

And if you don't know which property brother is circumcised, you're clearly not that big a fan of the property brothers.

And high bills are just the beginning of the problems here, because utilities are also exceptionally prone to scandal.

In fact, just Google your utility company right now and the word scandal, and chances are, they've gotten into some major trouble.

It's basically like Googling your local Jimmy Johns and E.

Coli, or the name of your favorite teacher from high school on January 6th.

You're not gonna like the results that you find.

And at their worst, utilities can even be deadly.

Take Pacific Gas and Electric, 1 of California's largest utilities.

We've talked before about the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in California history, and how it all started when this hook, holding up a PG&E transmission line broke, causing the line to ignite the brush below, eventually decimating several nearby communities and leaving 85 people dead.

PG&E has since paid fines and settlements, but it's still very much in operation, despite the fact that wasn't close to the only scandal that they've been involved in, as this reporter will tell you.

This is a company that was fined hundreds of times and faced more than 2, almost 3000000000 dollars worth of fines.

You know, if PG&E was an individual and not a corporation, I think by now, they would be in prison.

There's just been repeat offenders, They've been on probation, they violated the probation.

The problem is you can't take a corporation and put it into prison.

You can't, even though many corporations clearly deserve to be in prison.

From Enron to Purdue to any company that insists on talking like a sassy bitch on social media.

Hellman's once tweeted, you're in their DMs, we're getting spread on their bread.

-♪ Mayonnaise ♪ -♪ Laughter ♪ But PG&E is not only not in prison, it is still supplying power to millions of Californians who have no choice in the matter.

And if you're thinking, how the fuck is that possible?

It's about the incredible amount of power that we give to utilities, how weakly they can be regulated, and the damage this can do.

And let's start with the single most important thing to know about utility companies, which is, that for most of us, they're actually the only game in town.

If you want to go buy an iPhone or any other kind of consumer product, you go out to a store and you have a number of choices.

With electricity in most of the country, you really only have 1 choice, and that company has a monopoly.

In our modern economy, you are supposed to have choice.

Just look at all the streaming services out there.

There's Blockbuster 2.0, Superheroes and Old Racism, Anime, probably crashing on you right now, No Idea, No Idea, and until recently, News Quibi.

But utilities operating as natural monopolies dates back to the fact that around the start of the 20th century, we needed to build a nationwide power grid from scratch.

And that obviously required a huge investment.

Companies were only incentivized to do that with a guarantee that they'd be able to operate in a non-competitive environment.

But those monopolies persist to this day, and mostly as for-profit, investor-owned companies.

Now, in exchange for giving utilities a deal that sweet, we did put some restrictions in place.

The law says that they should spend the least they can while providing quality, environmentally safe service, which sounds great because it caps their ability to make too much money.

But, and this is a huge but, there is a carve-out Because when they build something, a piece of physical infrastructure, they are allowed to then pass along that cost to you through your bill, plus an additional percentage that they get to keep as profit, usually around 10%.

The bigger the project, like a power plant, the more profit they make.

Big monopoly utilities get a guaranteed range of a rate of return on their capital expenditure.

So, like a waiter in a restaurant where there's a guaranteed tip, The more that is spent, if you buy dessert or you get a bottle of wine, the more money they're going to make.

If your profit is pegged to doing certain things, you're gonna make sure that you do those things more.

It's just like if HBO only paid me for every time I got weirdly horny for an animal.

Except that's actually a bad example, because the show would pretty much look exactly like it already does.

And in the best case scenario, this might mean that utilities are investing in infrastructure that is badly needed.

The problem is, they can also be shameless in increasing spending even when it is not needed or on projects that are actively falling apart.

When utilities there tried to add 2 nuclear reactors to an existing plant, the project's cost spiraled.

And a massive federal investigation later revealed that executives at South Carolina Electric and Gas and its parent company knew the project was facing major delays and cost overruns, but withheld that information in order to keep it going.

Meanwhile, local customers paid more than 2000000000 dollars in the form of higher bills for a project which, by the way, never generated any power.

And some working on the project at the time were troubled by what they were seeing.

Just listen to this leaked voicemail from a vice president at the parent company who later became a whistleblower in which she tried to warn her colleagues about what was happening.

They are mismanaging that project and it's at y'all's expense.

They're doing it because they want to make money and they're propping up earnings to be able to make their bonuses, and it's gonna be at your expense.

Not just what she's saying there, but also that people still leave voicemails.

Absolutely no 1 should be doing that anymore.

In fact, every voicemail greeting should just be, sorry I missed your call, please don't leave a message after the tone, just text me instead, because it's not 1997.

-♪ ♪ -♪ And overspending isn't the only way that utilities incentives can wind up screwing over customers, because they can deliberately stifle innovation that might make power cheaper or be a net benefit to society, as this solar power executive will tell you.

These utility monopolies are saying, well, wait a minute, we gotta crush it before it gets too big.

They wanna build more plants so they can make more money.

And if we take a little bite out of that apple and we say, hey guys, we got solar panels everywhere on all these homes, and you don't need to build that many more power plants, then the utility goes, well, wait a minute, how am I gonna make more money next year?

People putting up solar panels and generating their own electricity threatens the anti-competitive structure of a utilities monopoly, so they're obviously gonna try and step in and block it.

You think I want to compete with Euphoria or Love Island or this YouTube video of ducks annihilating a bowl of peas?

-♪♪♪♪ You could be watching that on a loop right now instead of watching this show, you idiots.

Some activists have even used rooftop solar as a way of challenging the monopolies in their states.

Remember that church from earlier where the pastor was talking about people cutting pills in half to make ends meet?

Well, in 2015, to help cut costs, it partnered with this local non-profit.

And in an attempt to challenge the laws on the books, the non-profit installed a small solar panel system on the roof of the church at no upfront cost, financing it by selling electricity to them at about half the rates that their utility, Duke Energy, charged.

Now, similar arrangements are permitted in other states, but not in North Carolina, and Duke Energy pushed back hard, asking the state's regulators to issue a cease and desist to the non-profit and invoke its power to fine them up to $1,000 a day for every day it sold power to the church.

And in the end, Duke Energy got what they wanted.

That church's solar arrangement was shut down and any hope of replicating it in the state was squashed.

And when circumcised property brother asked Duke about this whole saga, their response wasn't great.

Faith Community Church wanted to test regulation in North Carolina by doing something that was basically illegal.

This was an African-American church, and we're a big utility, and we're a target.

And sometimes there are groups out there, they're not trying to advance policy, they're trying to get media attention, and they did a good job here.

Are there situations where, as a human being, you have a conflict as a utility company where you're saying this is how it has to be, versus maybe there's a bigger picture with something that's broken?

Just the way it's been has historically never been a great justification for something still happening.

In fact, there is only 1 time that that works as an argument, and when you're talking about the Milwaukee Brewers sausage race.

Now, why do a bunch of sausages race around the fields before the bottom of the sixth inning?

It doesn't make sense, and may it never change, long live the racing sausages.

And there are examples all over the country of utilities getting in the way of people using solar energy.

The argument being, If people start leaving the grid and generating their own power, then over time, the cost is gonna go up for everyone left behind.

And look, there is a longer conversation to be had about the proper way to bill people who use solar panels, but making it cost prohibitive is definitely not the answer.

And if you're thinking, shouldn't there be someone who can rein these companies in?

Most states have public utility commissions.

They are responsible for things like signing off on any big investments proposed, and also overseeing the setting of rates.

Unfortunately, many of them are badly outmatched by the utilities that they're supposed to regulate, and this can have major consequences.

A few years back, Mississippi Power ran into massive cost overruns on a new plant that it was building, which was initially expected to cost 1.8 billion dollars, but ended up ballooning to 7.5 billion.

And in hindsight, there were obvious red flags that you would hope the state commission would have been more wary of from the very start.

Just listen to a company representative explain his side of the story.

Can you tell us why the project is over budget and also behind schedule?

I would tell you that if we made any errors in judgment at all, any missteps, is that when we took that proposal to the commission, we were only at between 10 or 15 percent of design.

And so I think it's the little engineering that we had done at that particular point in time that has sort of come back to haunt us a little bit in terms of cost and schedule.

The plant was only 10 to 15 percent designed, and the commission let it go ahead anyway.

That is not how designing complex energy plants should work.

That's not even how designing Lego sets work.

That's why you've never seen 1 called A Little Tree and You Figure Out the Rest.

-♪ ♪ -♪ Now, in Mississippi's case, the problem seems to have been a commission rushing to approve a project without doing proper due diligence.

But in other cases, like Alabama's state commission, the problem seems to be ideological.

It has been described as 1 of the most opaque, politically motivated, and environmentally hostile commissions in the country.

Their commissioners are actually elected, and I do want to show you 1 campaign ad for the woman who is currently running it.

Twinkle's priority is our priority, jobs.

We need more conservatives like Twinkle who put jobs first.

Twinkle is a proven conservative Republican.

Who has stood up and fought the liberal special interest in Washington.

Twinkle Andres Kavanaugh, our way of fighting back.

As in, when she was born, her parents were asked, would you want to name your baby?

She even confirmed this story herself, saying, my daddy thought I needed a fancy name.

It may be cute for a three-year-old, but it gets old.

And honestly, I could see how being called Twinkle could get old after a while, but let me just say this, Twinkle.

For everyone who isn't you, calling you Twinkle will never get old.

And look, I'm not saying that Twinkle is a bad commissioner because she's called Twinkle.

I'm saying that Twinkle's a bad commissioner because for 1 thing, when there was a push for more open hearings on electricity rates in the state, she outright said, I want to exclude the environmentalists from taking part in the process, and suggested that environmental extremists only wanted these open proceedings so they could trot out their fancy San Francisco environmental lawyers and junk science hucksters.

When 1 of Alabama's other commissioners, Chip Beeker, again, real name, Because it seems Alabama's utility commissioners must by law sound like Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters.

When Chip Beaker was running for his position, he wrote in an op-ed, the so-called climate change crisis is about as real as unicorns and little green men from Mars.

Which is obviously ridiculous because climate change is very real and unicorns, sadly, do not exist.

Which I know is not ideal, although if you're in the market for a majestic creature with a lot of horn, This guy may be able to help you.

And look, having a commission run by science denying ideologues is bad enough, but in other states, public officials can appear fully in utilities' pockets.

A few years back, a big utility there, First Energy, was caught up in this massive scandal.

Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and 4 others have been charged with racketeering, accused by the feds of funneling millions from the energy company into a 501c4 dark money group called Generation Now.

OK, first, Generation Now sounds like a failed 90s boy band whose members are all now spokesmen for different cryptocurrency companies.

But very basically, What happened there is that First Energy funneled $60 million to the Speaker of the Ohio House to get him to pass a bill, HB-6, that has been called the worst energy bill of the 21st century.

Now, I have to tell you, the House Speaker in question denies wrongdoing and is still awaiting trial.

But what is very clear is that First Energy was working extremely hard to influence the decision-making process.

They actually paid the chairman of the state's utility commission 22 million dollars in consulting fees in the years directly preceding him becoming their regulator.

And while he denies doing anything improper, I will point out that on the very day the bill passed, First Energy's CEO wrote to him saying, and I quote, "'HB-6, fuck anybody who ain't us.'" which is very cool, right?

And just so you know, the man who wrote that is this guy, who looks like he's left lengthy reviews for multiple gas grills on HomeDepot.com.

This man wrote the words, -"Fuck anybody who ain't us." -$5,000.

This old white man take those precise words with his old white fingers.

So look, to recap, our utility system largely consists of for-profit companies with monopolies over an essential service building as much shit as they possibly can so they can pass the cost along to you on your electric bill.

And to see just how bad all this can get, let's go back to PG&E.

Arguably, California's most hated company.

In fact, a quick skim through any PG&E affiliates Yelp page gives you just a taste of that, because you'll find reviews like, absolute shit show, fucking garbage company, fucking PG&E, your day will come.

And my personal favorite, the actual technicians, lovely, often hot, 2 boots.

Phone people, hit or miss, either dismissive and stupid or thoughtful and kind, corporation itself, evil empire personified.

Which is a lot more nuanced than you typically find in Yelp reviews.

Look, I understand that the lowest ranking smoking hot employee that I interface with isn't to blame for the company's larger structural problems, but for the record, fuck everyone in the C-suite with a cactus.

And you can see why Californians hate PG&E so much.

In just 1 three-year time span, it was responsible for around 1,500 fires.

That's an average of more than 1 fire a day.

And at that point, PG&E are less a utility and more a fire company that occasionally also delivers power to people's homes.

And so many of PG&E's problems stem from the way that they are incentivized to operate.

Because remember, their profits are pegged to money that they spend on new infrastructure that they build, not on what they spend maintaining it or the area around it.

And when you don't maintain equipment, eventually, it fails.

That old hook that broke and started the campfire was 97 years old.

And it's not even their only hook that was dangerously worn down.

This hook, found a couple miles up the line from where the campfire started, shows just how bad things got.

A groove more than halfway through the metal from decades of grinding against the hole it hung from.

Isn't exactly a phrase that you want to associate with a vital piece of our power grid.

It's barely a phrase you want to hear at your grandparent's 50th anniversary.

It's obviously what's kept them together for so long.

-♪ Laughter ♪ -And it's not like PG&E didn't have the money to perform basic maintenance, because in the 5 years before the campfire, it issued over 5000000000 dollars in dividends to shareholders.

Look, clearly, this isn't a system where you, the customer, are going to be prioritized.

If anything, the model only makes sense if the company's shareholders are viewed as the customer and your bills are the product.

And while you would hope elected officials in California would crack down on PG&E, many take money from them and don't seem to see anything really wrong with that.

Just watch as California's governor blows off a pretty pointed question.

PG&E was convicted of 6 federal felonies in 2016.

After that, you took more than $200,000 to help get elected.

How should people trust you to be running the show to come up with the solution?

I, I wish you luck with whatever you're working on, but that's a strange question.

Because that seemed pretty reasonable to me.

Governor, why do you think the Wiggles had Princess Diana killed?

There was no big red car anywhere near the scene.

But what he just asked you deserved a proper answer.

And yet, frustratingly, if you live in California and PG&E is your provider, there is nothing you can do.

Every time you turn your lights on, You are reminded that your utility has killed people, and the only real recourse you have is giving them a shitty Yelp review.

Well, if we were able to start our power grid over from scratch, what we would probably do is make utilities publicly owned and run by the government.

It wouldn't fix everything, things might still go wrong, but you would remove so many of the worst incentives here.

Unfortunately, transitioning now would be hugely expensive and, in all likelihood, isn't happening anytime soon.

But there are smaller steps that we should also be taking in the meantime.

For instance, instead of having a system where utilities are incentivized just to build stuff, we can incentivize them to work directly in the customer's best interest by investing in things like maintenance, renewables, and energy conservation.

This is something known as performance-based regulation, and several states are already trying it.

Now, as for the regulators, look, commissions will, unfortunately, probably always vary in effectiveness, depending on whether it's staffed by people who actually give a shit about this, or let's say, someone named Twinkle.

But, We have to make sure that under-resourced regulators get more support, more access to technical expertise, and more jurisdiction over the companies that they monitor.

And at this point, I would usually bring out a mascot that we made for utilities that's representative of just how terrible and horrifying they are.

But amazingly, I don't even need to do that, do I?

Because they already made a murderous hell demon almost a hundred years ago with Ready Killawatt.

So all we really need to do is simply bring Ready back.

I'm thrilled to present to you the glorious return of Reddy Kilowatt.

The world is my monopoly, and I alone control it.

Do you want your fucking lights to go on and off?

Look, I cannot believe I'm saying this, Reddy, but you are actually too good at representing how shitty utility companies are.

I could kill you right now, and there's nothing anyone could do about it.

No, you turn the lights back on, you freak!

See you next week for another episode of Last Week Tonight with Ready Kilowatt.

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