Whipped by federal regulators and the public in the wake of the Pacific Gas & Electric San Bruno gas pipeline explosion, the California Public Utilities Commission held a workshop Jan 11 to guide a change in future safety regulation. “Sept. 9 [2010] was a failure of the commission,” Ed Randolph, commission Energy Division director said. He noted that after deregulation in the mid-1990s, the commission “drifted away” from a focus on regulation, to a “purely policy making body.” Changing the way the commission has approached safety in the past, and taking the vow of “never again” is the goal, said commissioner Mike Florio. The new tack is approaching safety with “qualitative” as well as “quantitative” analysis, according to commission president Mike Peevey. There’s a cost to getting to that goal, noted consumer advocates. “Qualitative analysis can become an excuse to justify all sorts of [utility] spending,” noted The Utility Reform Network attorney Marcel Hawiger. Pacific Gas & Electric attorney Steve Frank said that the cost of safety measures is going to be “front and center” in its 2014-17 general rate case. Frank expects the initial filings for the ratesetting procedure to be available in July. “It will be focusing heavily on a qualitative showing of risk,” he added.