"And unlike PG&E, which loses nothing if customers switch from gas to electric, the city-owned Philadelphia Gas Works is strictly a gas utility..."

PG&E stands to make out like a bandit if customers switch from gas heat to electric heat - at least, if Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant is shut down in 2024-25.

Pacific Gas & Electric, unsurprisngly, sells both gas and electricity. Now - what's more efficient, heating a house with a) a gas furnace, or b) electricity which has been generated by burning gas to boil water, then using expanding steam to rotate a wheel at exactly 15 rpm, then using eight magnets on the wheel to push electrons in a coil back and forth at 60 Hz, then pushing that electricity 100+ miles to Berkeley, then using electrons moving back and forth in Berkeley to heat a wire, then blowing air over the wire and into the house you want to heat?

Ding ding! You guessed it...the gas furnace is far more efficient. PG&E, however, makes more money on the inefficient way to heat a house, because they profit on both the sale of electricity and sale of the fuel used to generate it. In fact, the more gas PG&E burns, the more money the utility will make - and Berkeley's plan to eliminate gas hookups will make emissions even worse than they are now.

This is the perverse reasoning behind PG&E's shutdown of Diablo Canyon Power Plant. Though Diablo Canyon is both economical and profitable, its owner can make more money by burning gas, dumping 7 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year, and sending ratepayers the bill.

Or so its boardmembers think. At this moment, two hedge funds are in a battle for hostile takeover of PG&E. This afternoon, a public watchdog group filed a lawsuit challenging suspicious changes to California's utility code which would benefit the utility. Suffice to say, the story is far from over.