SAN FRANCISCO — The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is working to focus the strategic objectives of its utility-funded Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC) program to better support the state’s ambitious goals to decarbonize its economy. 

“The objectives are important for guiding the next cycle of EPIC investments with clear and measurable targets aimed at supporting clean energy solutions and ratepayer benefits,” CPUC Commissioner Karen Douglas said at a July 9 EPIC workshop.  

Douglas encouraged workshop participants to share thoughts on how to refine EPIC’s objectives in ways that help California meet its zero-carbon goals while addressing “gaps and opportunities to move down these pathways more quickly, best position stakeholders and program participants to lead innovations and innovative investments” and establish “solid targets” for measuring the program’s impacts.  

Established by the CPUC in 2011, EPIC is administered by the California Energy Commission (CEC) and the state’s three investor-owned utilities — Pacific Gas and Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison.  

The CEC administers 80% of the funds, leaving 20% to the utilities. The program invests in a wide range of projects, including building decarbonization, cybersecurity and demand reduction. According to the CPUC’s EPIC Strategic Objectives Workshop Report, the program will have invested nearly $3.4 billion in clean energy technology innovation between 2012 and 2030.  

EPIC was renewed in 2020 for 10 years, consisting of two five-year investment cycles. Under the guidance of the fourth EPIC Investment Plan, the CPUC authorized a budget of $147.26 million per year for the first investment cycle, which runs from January 2021 to Dec. 31, 2025.  

In preparation for the fifth cycle, which will run from 2026 to 2030, the CPUC launched a yearlong planning process to develop strategic goals and objectives that could better inform investments. In April 2023, the CPUC issued a decision identifying the need for program-wide goals that could help evaluate the progress of investments and the extent to which investment plan portfolios maximize benefits for ratepayers. The goals were approved this March, and include transportation electrification, distributed energy resource integration, building decarbonization, achieving 100% net-zero carbon emissions and the coordinated role of gas, and climate adaptation.  

The second half of the yearlong planning process for the fifth cycle, launched in March, focused on developing strategic objectives that would support the goals. In its EPIC Strategic Objectives Workshop Report, the CPUC defined strategic objectives as “clear, measurable and robust targets to guide EPIC investment plan strategies to scale and deploy innovation to align with EPIC’s strategic goals.”  

In creating the objectives, program administrators and The Accelerate Group, a consulting firm retained by the CPUC and CEC, invited stakeholders to identify gaps from the strategic goal process. According to Accelerate President Andrew Barbeau, the effort aimed to look “specifically at things that were missing that were critical” to decarbonization in the 2026-2030 time frame and “that were core to the focus of the EPIC program that represented challenges that could be addressed and overcome by the EPIC program and its specific mission.” 

 The working group process identified 13 objectives. Key among them were:   

• • reducing medium- and heavy-duty charging infrastructure costs [Objective A];  
  • overcoming barriers to electric vehicle benefits in disadvantaged and vulnerable communities [Objective B];  
  • reducing the cost of whole-home electrification;  
  • increasing predictability of weather, intermittent resources and load;  
  • providing data input into a “value of DER” framework;  
  • cost-effective grid hardening for long-term climate impacts. 

Stakeholder Input

Since last fall, EPIC administrators have hosted 18 workshops to develop strategic goals and objectives for the fifth investment plan. The July 9 workshop was the last before the CPUC is expected to publish a report and consider adopting the objectives.  

Some stakeholders asked for clarification and provided input on how the objectives could be improved. 

Peter Chen, a supervisor in the transportation unit at the CEC, questioned why light-duty vehicles, which were included in an earlier iteration of Objective A, were removed.  

“The costs associated with light-duty charging [are] still an important gap, especially with public charging infrastructure,” Chen said.  

Barbeau said consideration of light-duty vehicles was woven into other objectives.  

“Earlier in the process, there was a lot of focus on reducing costs in light duty charging infrastructure,” Barbeau said. “I think the cost of light duty infrastructure and its challenges to disadvantaged and vulnerable communities definitely [live] within [Objective] B.” 

Jimmy O’Hare, product manager for R&D operations at PG&E, also questioned why wildfire mitigation wasn’t specifically included in the objectives.  

“It strikes me that language and opportunities, particularly around wildfire mitigation and vegetation management, [are] still omitted from these strategic objectives,” O’Hare said. “At PG&E, about 10 to 16% of money from our bills [goes] to vegetation management and wildfire mitigation, so it seems like there’s a direct link between wildfire mitigation, vegetation management and affordability, and I think there is still a lot of opportunity for innovation demonstrations to happen in that area.”  

Barbeau highlighted that while wildfire mitigation wasn’t completely left out, there was a “strong concern about not encroaching on things that are being addressed in other proceedings” and that EPIC’s role is laid out more broadly in Objective M, which addresses grid hardening.  

“EPIC by itself isn’t going to completely replace the grid,” he said. “The role of EPIC here … was really focused on tools and frameworks to improve long-term planning. That could be grid, it could be prioritization of upgrades, it could be identifying vulnerable equipment. … I think technologies and solutions around wildfire mitigation do go there, as well as vegetation management.” 

Next Steps

The CPUC’s Energy Division expects this summer to publish a staff proposal with stakeholder input on the strategic objectives this summer, though an exact date hasn’t been set. In the winter, the CPUC will vote on the objectives and then turn the process over to program administrators to develop initiatives and solicitations.  

“This has been kind of a long process and it’s still kind of only halfway towards 2026, but what I’m really proud of and excited about is the amount of people that we’ve had participate,” Barbeau said. “We’ve had really good, open, transparent processes provided with a significant amount of input for a question that is actually very hard — not just thinking ahead about what you want to see happen on the energy system and the electric grid, but what does it take to get there, what are the gaps and challenges in the way, and forecasting the innovation needed to overcome it.”