[18]: 46–48 John Martin and Eugene J. de Sabla, started out as gold miners along the Yuba River,[26][27] harnessing hydroelectric power, building hydro plants in Nevada City (1895),[28] and Northern California.

In the early 1890s, Martin, de Sabla, Alfonso Tregidgo, and later, Romulus Riggs Colgate, began developing a hydroelectric powerhouse on the South Fork of the Yuba River.

This consortium was convicted in 1949 of federal charges involving conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in the sale of buses and supplies to National City Lines and its subsidiaries.

[45] Within a few years of its incorporation, PG&E made significant inroads into Northern California's hydroelectric industry through purchase of existing water storage and conveyance facilities.

[73] Justice Thomas R. Berger of British Columbia shelved the project for at least 10 years, citing concerns from First Nations groups, whose land the pipeline would have traversed, as well as potential environmental impacts.

[74][6] David Roe, who was an environmentalist and the Environmental Defense Fund's West Coast general counsel, "mounted an assault on the longstanding assumption that steady growth in coal- and nuclear-generating capacity was the only solution to the nation's energy needs".

[91] The court case was superseded by the Restructuring Support Agreement (RSA) of December 9, 2019[92] and by the approved bankruptcy reorganization plan,[17] wherein PG&E accepted liability for the Tubbs Fire.

[113][114] Judge Donato was scheduled to begin hearings February 18, 2020 to determine how to do the estimation and how much PG&E needs to put in a trust fund for wildfire victims.

[150] In April, as the bondholders crafted a plan to bring the company out of bankruptcy, Governor Gavin Newsom expressed his concern that new board members would have little knowledge of California and lack expertise in how to run a utility safely.

[151] In April 2019, PG&E announced a new CEO and management team, led by former head of Progress Energy Inc and the Tennessee Valley Authority Bill Johnson, that would assume charge of the company, as it went through bankruptcy.

[153][154] A week prior, Newsom had declared PG&E's "greed and mismanagement", along with the utility's lack of focus on hardening its grid and under-grounding its transmission lines in vulnerable areas, as reasons for its inability to deliver electricity and the shutdowns.

This would make California free of operating commercial nuclear power plants, but will mean the loss of 2256 MW of generation that produced over 18,000 GWh of electricity per year.

[179] Pacific Gas & Electric planned to build the first commercially viable nuclear power plant in the United States at Bodega Bay, a fishing village fifty miles north of San Francisco.

These units, along with two 15 MWe Mobile Emergency Power Plants (MEPPs), were retired in the summer of 2010, and replaced by the Humboldt Bay Generating Station, built on the same site.

As a result of EDF's involvement in PG&E's rate cases, the company was eventually fined $50 million by the California Public Utilities Commission for failing to adequately implement energy efficiency programs.

[193] Pacific Gas and Electric Company reported Total CO2e emissions (Direct + Indirect) for the twelve months ending 31 December 2019 at 4,510 Kt (-60 /-1.3% y-o-y).

[199]: 228 [200] PG&E used chromium 6—"one of the cheapest and most efficient commercially available corrosion inhibitors"—at their compressor station plants in their cooling towers along the natural gas transmission pipelines.

[205][206]: 29  In July 2014, California became the first state to acknowledge that ingested chromium-6 is linked to cancer and as a result has established a chromium-6 maximum contaminant level (MCL) of 10 parts per billion (ppb).

PG&E built a concrete wall barrier that is about a half-mile-long to contain the plume, pump ethanol into the ground to convert chromium-6 into chromium-3, and have planted acres of alfalfa.

[212][213]: 2  In early 2016, the New York Times described Hinkley as having been slowly turned into a ghost town due to the contamination of the area with owners unable to sell their properties.

[244][245]: 517 [246] On April 1, 2014, a United States grand jury in San Francisco charged PG&E with "knowingly and willfully" violating the Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Act.

At the time, the Tubbs Fire was the most destructive wildfire in California history,[255][256] burning parts of Napa, Sonoma, and Lake counties, inflicting its greatest losses in the city of Santa Rosa.

In November 2018, PG&E and its parent company were sued in the San Francisco County Superior Court by multiple victims of the Camp Fire – the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history.

Later investigation revealed that a "broken hook may have allowed a piece of electrically charged equipment to swing free and come close enough to the tower to arc, providing the spark that ignited the blaze.

[274] Since 2018, PG&E has increased its efforts to prevent and mitigate wildfires including a 24/7 threat-monitoring center, multiplying its vegetation regulations around utility poles from four to 15 feet and adding 100 weather stations in high-risk areas.

[286] On February 28, 2002, after the collapse of Enron, which used dubious accounting and partnerships to hide its debt, PG&E announced to restate results dating back to 1999, to show leases related to power plant construction that had been previously kept off its balance sheet.

[289] The PG&E and other investor owned utilities that are essentially granted monopoly status in California are guaranteed a negotiated fair rate of return on equity (ROE).

In his 2013 paper Jonathan Cook of the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center, described the 'unique factors' that explain why PG&E's rates are higher than other utilities in California.

This investment also will enhance transmission lines critical for renewable energy integration, data center operations, and the growing fleet of electric vehicles.

[296] In 2009 the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) unanimously approved a resolution that would allow the South San Joaquin Irrigation District to purchase PG&E's electric facilities in Manteca, Ripon and Escalon.