Can burying power lines prevent California’s next big wildfire?
PG&E, one of the country’s largest utilities, wants to put 10,000 miles of lines underground.
On July 18, California’s Pacific Gas & Electric revealed that its electrical equipment might have sparked the Dixie Fire, a blaze that has since become the second-largest in the state’s history, torching 700,000 acres and destroying more than 1,200 structures. Three days later, PG&E, which emerged from bankruptcy last year after amassing some $30 billion worth of liabilities from wildfires, announced something more surprising: To prevent future blazes, the state’s largest utility plans to rip out 10,000 miles of overhead power lines in high fire risk areas and bury them underground.
The plan caps a years-long push by utilities to bury more power lines in the face of worsening weather and rising risks from climate change. According to PG&E, it’s the largest such effort ever announced by a U.S. utility: Pattie Poppe, the company’s CEO, described as a “moonshot” on a call with reporters, But whether PG&E can turn its announcement into action is a big “if,” as the utility has not estimated a timeline for the project, and it’s not clear that the benefits will outweigh the multi-billion dollar cost.
PG&E’s announcement, nearly two years after its equipment sparked the deadly Camp Fire, was “a clear recognition that something has to change,” said Julie McNamara, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “But if this is not part of a holistic plan that is clearly reckoning with all of the challenges afoot, then this is a distraction.”
https://grist.org/wildfires/can-burying-power-lines-prevent-california-next-wildfire-pge/
