Southern California Edison Elects to Participate in Wildfire Insurance Fund

Business Wire 25-Jul-2019 4:05 PM

Southern California Edison today announced its commitment to contribute to the state's wildfire insurance fund, authorized by the recently passed comprehensive wildfire legislation known as Assembly Bill 1054 (Holden, D-Pasadena).

California's investor-owned utilities are required to inform the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) if they will be participating in the fund within 15 days after July 12 when Gov. Newsom signed the bill into law. SCE will make its first contribution to the fund by Sept. 10, as mandated by the legislation. SCE's initial contribution to the fund will be approximately $2.4 billion, with a total of $10.5 billion expected to be contributed by all of the state's investor-owned utilities. SCE will contribute approximately $95 million to the fund on Jan. 1 of each year for 10 years.

"We appreciate the significant leadership that Gov. Newsom and the Legislature have shown and their willingness to act with urgency to address this wildfire crisis through the passage of Assembly Bill 1054 and companion measures. The state must ensure careful implementation and make some refinements in the future to ensure their success; we will work hard to see those changes made," said Pedro J. Pizarro, president and CEO of Edison International, SCE's parent company. "This important legislation, with its crucial establishment of an insurance fund, works toward restoring California's regulatory framework to provide the financial stability that utilities require to invest in system safety, reliability and resiliency while continuing to drive toward a clean energy future."

AB 1054 establishes a wildfire fund to reimburse utilities for payment of third-party damage claims arising from certain wildfires that exceed, in aggregate in a calendar year, the greater of $1 billion or the utility's own insurance coverage.

SCE stated that it expects to fund its contributions to the insurance fund through a combination of debt financings and equity contributions from Edison International. SCE's contributions to the fund will not be paid by electricity rates from customers and will be excluded from the company's authorized capital structure.

About Southern California Edison

An Edison International (NYSE:EIX) company, Southern California Edison is one of the nation's largest electric utilities, serving a population of approximately 15 million via 5 million customer accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area within Central, Coastal and Southern California.

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