Executives at Edison International, parent company of Southern California Edison, are trying to live in the present while the state of California mulls another round of potential wildfire liability reforms.
“Let me be very clear, our singular focus today is on 2026,” President and CEO Pedro Pizarro told analysts on Tuesday during the company's first-quarter earnings call. “[If] we don't see legislation this year, I think it's quite likely we would see, for example, credit rating impacts not only for utilities or insurance companies, but you could see it in other sectors in the state. You could see it for the state's own financing authority.”
An April 7 report by the California Earthquake Authority, written at the request of the state legislature, calls for California to “develop a durable way for utilities to avoid bankruptcy if possible, and to promptly exit if bankruptcy becomes unavoidable.” The report proposed three potential “pathways to catastrophe resilience.”
The pathways, which the report describes as non-exclusive, include community-wide wildfire hardening, strengthening and expanding insurance coverage for private property, and shoring up programs such as the state’s Wildfire Fund for utilities facing litigation. The third pathway recommends, among other actions, charging premiums for coverage under the Wildfire Fund, which could be expanded to cover other entities. Numbers floated by the report include a $4 billion outlay for SCE.
Pizarro praised the report, saying that he appreciated its holistic perspective, but he added that he thinks California needs to return to a cost-of-service model for regulated utilities.
“We also recognize that there could be a lot of different ins and outs and ideas that folks throw out, so we will continue to engage with all the stakeholders and evaluate any and all packages on their merits at the time,” he said.
SCE announced on Wednesday that it has so far offered more than $500 million to nearly 3,800 parties that have filed claims under the company's Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program, set up to provide those affected by the 2025 Eaton Fire with an alternative to litigation. Claimants have accepted about 1,000 of those offers, according to a company news release. The company has to date received 3,200 claims from more than 9,500 individuals, trusts and other entities.
Pizarro said it was still too early to estimate how much the program might cost or what the company's total liability tied to the Eaton Fire may be. Edison International Executive Vice President and CFO Maria Rigatti said claims may be delayed while affected residents work with their insurers to determine their level of coverage, and that the three-year statute of limitations on property damages means the company could continue to see new claims for some time.
Edison International and SCE had as of April 21 been named in about 2,000 lawsuits related to the Eaton Fire, according to company U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Those lawsuits involve some 30,000 individual plaintiffs, including the County of Los Angeles, the cities of Pasadena and Sierra Madre, and the U.S. federal government. The first jury trial related to Eaton Fire litigation has been set for January 2027.
The company faces another 101 lawsuits related to other wildfires and related disasters dating back to 2017. “This litigation could take a number of years to be completely resolved because of the complexity of the matters and the number of plaintiffs,” the company filings state.
Outside the wildfire news, company executives said 2026 should be a relatively quiet year for SCE, with no major regulatory actions on the horizon. It plans to seek its next general rate case in 2029. The utility expects 30%-40% load growth through 2035, driven primarily by electrification and existing consumer demand.
SCE's five-year capital plan remains unchanged at $38 billion to $41 billion, but the company requested an additional $3.1 billion in March to fund an advanced metering initiative Rigatti said would support grid resilience and provide data for AI-enabled cost-cutting initiatives.
