A 40-year-old natural gas water heater at the Walnut House Cooperative in Berkeley on Aug. 28, 2024. Systems like these are being phased out in favor of electric heaters under new rules from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. 

You’re paying more on your home gas bill this year than you were last year. And the year before that. And the year before that. 

In fact, Californians are paying nearly 50% more per unit of gas than five years ago — even as the average household uses 12% less. Demand is falling. Bills are rising. Something is very wrong.

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Part of it is obvious: methane gas is a volatile commodity. Californians learned this the hard way in winter of 2022-23, when a perfect storm of unusually cold weather, low natural gas storage levels, and pipeline infrastructure constraints sent prices soaring to five times the national average. More recently, the Iran War has caused natural gas prices to spike in Europe and Asia.

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But there’s a hidden story that explains the majority of what you’re paying for on your gas bill. 

California’s three largest gas utilities have doubled their pipeline asset spending from $27 billion to $57 billion — replacing pipes at $3 million to $5 million per mile. Utilities get to recover those costs by raising rates, which means higher bills for Californians. Today, about 60% of your gas bill goes toward pipelines, operations and shareholder returns — not actual gas. Forty years ago, it was the reverse. Californians are funding a pipeline empire that........

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