PG&E yesterday announced that it was planning to underground 10,000 miles of its power lines to prevent future wildfires. Costs are estimated to be substantial, in the region of $40 billion. Who will pay for it? Ratepayers are the most obvious choice. In fact, in its February wildfire mitigation plan to the CPUC, the utility estimated a total revenue requirement of $3.6 billion from ratepayers for $5 billion worth of wildfire mitigation measures. Another option for the utility is securitization, a topic I wrote about earlier. There's also the current administration's $2 trillion infrastructure plan that aims to "reenergize" the grid. Based on reports, $73 billion out of that total amount is set aside for laying out new lines in the electric grid.