I've not researched this as much as I'd like to, but as far as I know, the entire point of this change is to facilitate/incentivize people to finally move away

I've not researched this as much as I'd like to, but as far as I know, the entire point of this change is to facilitate/incentivize people to finally move away from natural gas to electric appliances. To do this, folks will need a financial incentive to switch, which means an effective tax, but utilities can't really do that, so the idea is to just have everyone pay a large base for electricity, and then have diminishing returns on usage... where that doesn't exist for gas usage. Think about your typical California resident's home set up. They have wall plugs, but then they will have a gas stove, gas heater, and gas water heater... and because of the "historic" nature of CA (non)development, many of these appliances literally belong in wasteful era of the 1960s. The new structure will be painful for folks unwilling to switch to induction/electric range/stove, heat pump, and electric water heater, which is where the income-based rates become relevant. Every person of every income will have an incentive to switch to electrification, but a flat-tax would basically wreck poor folks, while providing zero incentive to change for wealthier folks. In theory, I honestly think it's a pretty smart way of doing things, but there are some notable priors and caveats. The first prior I have is that climate change matters, and swapping natural gas usage for electric will actually notably reduce GHG emissions (I think this is the case). The caveats are that they need to come out and say this is about climate change (they do in the actually detailed texts -- https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc-website/divisions/energy-division/documents/demand-response/demand-response-workshops/advanced-der---demand-flexibility-management/joint-ious-opening-testimony-exhibit-1.pdf https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc-website/divisions/energ... -- but they don't actually address it when discussing it. The second caveat I have is that this actually fucks over renters pretty hard.