Given the increase in natural gas prices, the distribution of gas and electric climate credits for 2023 will be accelerated to provide some winter bill relief to customers.

As a result, rather than receiving your gas credit in April and your electricity credits in August and September as many have for the past three years, there will be new distribution months this year.

Customers received their gas climate credit in February. The first distribution of the electric climate credits were received in March and the next will be in October. The credits will be noted on utility bills for these three months as the “California Climate Credit.”

Changing the distribution months does not change the total value of the climate credits you receive in a year. The shift will provide bill relief for customers. There is no action required to receive the credit. All gas and electricity customers, including community choice aggregation customers, will automatically receive the credit in their upcoming billing cycles. SDG&E will also alert customers to the climate credit via email.

SDG&E does not set the commodity price for natural gas. Instead, natural gas commodity prices are determined by national and regional markets. SDG&E buys natural gas in those markets on behalf of residential and small business customers, and the cost of buying that gas is billed to those customers with no markup, meaning SDG&E does not profit from the movement of gas commodity prices.

Under the federally funded Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), about $10 million is available to help San Diego Gas & Electric customers who are past due on their bill payments. Individuals and families who qualify for LIHEAP can potentially receive assistance ranging from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars depending on their income, household size and past-due balance.

SDG&E residential customers who have both gas and electric service saw a total of about $104 in bill credit on their February and March SDG&E statements, earlier than in previous years, following the decision made by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to move up the timing of two of three scheduled installments of California Climate Credit to provide winter bill relief. California gas consumers have been experiencing record high bills as a result of unprecedented market volatility in natural gas commodity prices in the West.