Rewiring California’s Transmission System — and Its Economy

Transmission is a choke point. California’s rates are the second-highest in the nation and have risen nearly 39% since 2019. Lead times on transformers and circuit breakers have stretched from two months to three years, with prices up 50–100%. Roughly 13 gigawatts of renewable and storage projects — enough to power 10 million homes — are stuck waiting on transmission equipment that hasn’t arrived.Kate Gordon and Priyanka Mohanty unpack how we got here: decades of flat electricity demand, a transmission supply chain we ceded overseas, and wildfire costs that are now part of everyone’s utility bill. Then, Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris (AD-73; Chair, Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee) joins to talk about AB 2516, the California Grid Manufacturing Initiative — a bill that would use California’s scale as a buyer to drive down the cost of transmission components, shorten delivery times, and seed in-state manufacturing. A study behind the bill projects more than 6,000 good-paying jobs, including 2,500 in direct manufacturing, and billions in ratepayer savings over two decades.The conversation closes on affordability — not as a retreat from climate ambition, but as the precondition for it.IN THIS EPISODEWhy transmission is “calcified,” and what data centers did to the load curveReshoring transmission components as industrial policy, not just supply chain hygieneBalancing incremental reform against calls to break up the utilitiesImplementation: what happens after the bill gets signedBy the Numbers: the average new car in America costs $50,000. How many models sell for under $30,000?LINKS & REFERENCESAB 2516 — California Grid Manufacturing Initiative (bill text & status): https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB2516Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris: https://petrie-norris.asmdc.org/The New York Times, “The Affordable Car Is Disappearing” (the By the Numbers source): https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/13/opinion/affordable-car-cost.htmlMore from California Forward: https://cafwd.orgCalifornia Dreamshot is a production of California Forward, in partnership with Pretty Good Productions. Executive Producer: Thomas Clayton Miller. Associate Producer: Sarah Walsh.