New Renewable Contracts Fell 27%. CPUC's Report Says 38%.
Summary
CPUC's 2026 Padilla Report puts new 2025 renewable contract prices at 6.1 cents per kWh, down from 8.4 cents in 2024 — a 27.4% drop its own Key Conclusions mislabel as 38%. What actually sets the bill hasn't moved that fast: investor-owned utilities' full renewable portfolio, legacy contracts included, still averages 10.56 cents per kWh and takes 57.8% of the generation cost for just 50.4% of the power.
What actually sets the bill
New contracts are cheap; the meter isn't, yet. Folding in utility-owned generation, the same report puts investor-owned utilities' full RPS portfolio — legacy contracts included — at 10.56 cents per kWh in 2025, down just 4.7% from 11.08 cents in 2024. That's 73% more than a brand-new 2025 contract costs, because most of what's on the bill was signed years before 6.1-cent pricing existed.
View data as table
| New contracts executed, 2024 | 8.4 | real-dollar average price of RPS contracts signed in 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| New contracts executed, 2025 | 6.1 | real-dollar average price of RPS contracts signed in 2025 |
| Full portfolio, legacy + UOG, 2024 | 11.1 | weighted-average RPS procurement expenditure across the full IOU portfolio, including utility-owned generation |
| Full portfolio, legacy + UOG, 2025 | 10.6 | the number closest to what actually prices customer bills — down just 4.7% while new contracts fell 27.4% |
Half the power, more of the bill
Renewables were 50.4% of the big utilities' 2025 generation mix, up from 49.2% in 2024 — but 57.8% of their generation cost. That's a 7.4-point gap between the share of power renewables supply and the share of the bill they represent; the report states both figures without explaining the difference.
View data as table
| Generation mix, 2024 | 49.2% | |
|---|---|---|
| Generation mix, 2025 | 50.4% | |
| Generation cost share, 2025 | 57.8% | RPS resources are half the power but well over half the generation bill |
Why now
The CPUC opened a rulemaking on September 3, 2026 to rewrite the Rate Case Plan governing how spending like this reaches customer rates — stated goal: affordability.
- New 2025 RPS contracts priced at 6.1¢/kWh, down 27.4% from 8.4¢/kWh in 2024 — not the 38% CPUC's own Key Conclusions state, which computes the change against the smaller number instead of the larger one.
- The number that actually prices bills moved far less: IOUs' full RPS portfolio, legacy contracts included, fell just 4.7% (11.08¢ → 10.56¢/kWh) — 73% above what a brand-new 2025 contract costs.
- Renewables were 50.4% of 2025 generation but 57.8% of generation cost — a 7.4-point gap between the share of power renewables supply and the share of the bill they represent, which the report states without explaining.
- CPUC opened a rulemaking September 3, 2026 to rewrite the Rate Case Plan that governs how this spending reaches customer rates, with affordability as a stated goal.
Figures are the Padilla Report's own real-dollar (inflation-adjusted via the Producer Price Index) numbers for the three large investor-owned utilities — PG&E, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric — not the smaller multi-jurisdictional utilities, community choice aggregators, or electric service providers the same report also covers separately. The Wayback Machine's save service returned server errors for both cited documents throughout research on September 22, 2026 (confirmed on repeated retries, including for unrelated third-party URLs, indicating a service-side outage rather than a block on these documents); the URLs cited are the issuer's own domain (cpuc.ca.gov) and were live and unchanged at the time of research.
Sources(2) ▾
- California Public Utilities Commission, 2026 Padilla Report: Costs and Cost Savings for the RPS Program (2026-04-01) — the report's own 2025 vs. 2024 RPS contract-price figures, the 'a 38 percent decrease' Key Conclusions line, the IOU weighted-average portfolio costs including utility-owned generation, and the RPS share of generation mix vs. generation cost cpuc.ca.gov
- California Public Utilities Commission, CPUC To Consider Updates to Rate Case Process to Strengthen Affordability, Accountability, and Transparency (2026-09-03) — why-now: the CPUC opened a rulemaking to rewrite the Rate Case Plan governing how procurement spending like RPS costs reaches customer rates, citing affordability cpuc.ca.gov
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CPUC's 2026 Padilla Report says new renewable contracts California's big utilities signed in 2025 average 6.1 cents per kWh, down from 8.4 cents in 2024. That's a 27.4% drop. The report's own Key Conclusions call it "a 38 percent decrease." It isn't — that's the size of the climb back from 6.1 to 8.4, run backwards.