Latest news with #PowerLines
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
U.S. electricity rates are rising, and utilities are making more money than ever
U.S. electricity costs are soaring. The average price of electricity hit 18 cents per kilowatt-hour in April 2025, up 35% from five years ago. It's significantly outpacing inflation. According to a recent PowerLines report, nearly 80 million Americans struggle to pay their utility bills, yet prices are expected to increase. In early 2025, U.S. gas and electric utilities either requested or were approved for rate hikes totaling roughly $20 billion. Utility companies say the price increases are necessary to upgrade our aging grid. Some also point to clean energy, specifically solar homeowners, as the reason electric bills are rising. But researchers have looked into the numbers and say they don't add up. 'Utility spending has been out of control for years and years and years,' said Brad Heavner, Executive Director of the California Solar and Storage Association (CALSSA). Stay informed on the latest industry news—delivered to your inbox each month. Sign up for EnergySage's newsletter. Your electric bill is divided into two sections: Supply and delivery. The supply part covers the cost of generating the electricity you use, while delivery is the cost of delivering the electricity to your home. Price fluctuations will always surround energy generation, whether it's coal, gas, or renewables. But when we asked Jigar Shah—an entrepreneur and podcaster who was formerly the Director of the Loans Program at the Department of Energy—he said it's not generation but the distribution part of our electric bills that has 'been going haywire.' 'Distribution used to be 20%, today, it's 50% of your bill,' said Jigar. Below is an example of an electric bill from a Massachusetts home. The electricity supply is about $220, which is still high, but the delivery charges are nearly $315, or 60% of the bill. So the question becomes, why are energy delivery costs rising? Jigar says our electricity demands are too great for the current grid infrastructure. 'People are buying all sorts of things that use electricity, whether hair dryers, electric vehicles, heat pumps, electric water heaters, or whatever it is. And every time you do that, the utility says, 'We need to be able to upgrade the distribution grid so that you can do whatever you want. You can turn everything on in your house simultaneously, and we have to be able to serve you.' That bargain is getting way too expensive,' said Jigar. He's right—Americans are using electricity like never before. This isn't necessarily bad because home electrification is excellent for our planet and health. The problem is that much of our power grid was built in the 1960s and 1970s, when people had one TV, no computers or internet, and only 12% of homes had air conditioning. Jesse Buchsbaum, energy economist and fellow at Resources of the Future (REF), said our electric bills are directly tied to utilities' investments to upgrade transmission and distribution infrastructure. (FYI—transmission lines are the high voltage wires that carry electricity from a power plant to your city or town.) 'In many places, the grid is aging, and so there are necessary upgrades that are needed, especially as climate risk and natural disaster risk are rising,' Jesse said. He also raises the valid argument of a changing climate. Over the last decade, we've seen record-hot summers and historic freezes, which only put a bigger strain on the grid. For example, in 2024, Hurricane Helene shut off power to more than two million North Carolinians. In 2021, the ice storm in Texas left millions of people powerless in freezing temperatures for days. To prevent these events from happening, utilities need to strengthen and expand our current power grid—and we're the ones paying for it. '[Rate increases] are needed to expand the grid, both in the generation sense, but also to build the poles and wires that will transport the power to those new sources of demand, " Jesse said. 'A lot of those costs end up being borne by both residential and commercial industrial rate payers.' While our electricity needs have increased and our grid needs upgrades, some experts argue that utilities are hiking our rates more than they need to. In a report published earlier this year, Brad and his team at CALSSA said the real reason rates are rising in California is 'out of control utility spending.' CALSSA hired an independent economist to investigate 20 years of utility rate case filings in the state. Brad said that when utilities claim they need more money to fix and expand the distribution grid, regulators are 'unable to say no' and approve rate hikes that may not be necessary. 'And the utilities get away with it—they're laughing year after year,' Brad said. 'Now, after two decades of effectively playing this game, their profits have soared and so have electric rates.' While the CALSSA report is specific to California, utility mismanagement of funds is a nationwide issue. RMI released a report in November 2024 highlighting how utilities have invested money into small transmission projects within their territories. The report says these small, local projects have very little oversight from state and federal regulators, earn the utilities guaranteed profits, and cost us ratepayers way more than if they were to invest in bigger, regional projects—ones that would require more overhead and planning. Report co-author Claire Wayner told Canary Media that transmission planning is like 'two cars being driven on two different roads in parallel. The regional road is like a toll road with all these checkpoints: identify regional needs, open competitive bidding windows, identify the costs and benefits…The local road has no speed limits. [Utilities] can build as much as they want.' Here's some proof in the pudding: A 2024 analysis by Grid Strategies found that transmission project spending hit an all-time high in 2023, but only 55 miles of new transmission lines were added that year, compared to a record 4,000 miles added in 2013. Yet, our electricity rates were about 20% less in 2013. 'We've authorized the utilities to spend a lot of money, and they haven't spent most of that money yet,' Brad said. 'It's really criminal—in some cases, we've paid them to make upgrades and fix transmission towers, and they haven't done it.' While millions of Americans are unable to pay their monthly bills, an analysis by the Energy and Policy Institute shows the country's largest publicly owned utilities pay their CEOs between $17 and $33 million a year. The CEOs earned a collective $647 million in 2023, a 9% increase from 2022. The 2025 analysis shows that the collective payout dropped to $530 million in 2024. However, it states that most of the 54 utilities examined increased their executive payouts year over year. Some utilities also claim that homes with solar panels are increasing your bills—a theory called 'the solar cost shift.' The idea is that if solar homeowners generate their own power, utilities make less money. But because solar homeowners still have to use the grid sometimes, the utility raises everyone else's rates to compensate. It sort of paints solar panel owners as freeloaders. Jigar says there is some cost shift involved when people go solar, but it's 'far smaller than what people are suggesting.' 'I think the bigger problem is that it feels bad when your bills are going up. And a bunch of people that have the means to put solar on their roof are getting a good deal, and all of your neighbors are not getting a good deal,' Jigar said. Most of us—whether we have solar panels or not—can look at our utility bill and clearly see charges related to solar panels. So, utilities are making us all pay extra while our neighbors with solar enjoy lower electric bills? It doesn't sound fair, but Brad and the CALLSSA team crunched the numbers and said the solar cost shift is extremely inflated and created with 'faulty math.' 'It's really very creative how [utilities] have built this methodology and storyline that has sunk in with a lot of policymakers. And they push it so hard and in such a widespread fashion that it's difficult to counter,' Brad said. It's not just California; the nonprofit Solar United Neighbors compiled numerous studies from Mississippi to Maine to Nevada and 'found little or no evidence for a 'cost shift' from rooftop solar customers.' Similarly, a report from Brookings found that the economic benefits of solar homeowners not only outweigh the costs but, in most cases, provide a 'net benefit' for the utility and non-solar ratepayers. 'People are catching on to that fact, and the data is pretty clear how much they've increased their spending,' said Brad. 'To deflect attention away from them, they've come up with this elaborate 'cost shift' story saying solar customers are to blame.' Utilities say they have to increase our rates to bring more electricity onto the grid during moments of high demand, like on a hot summer day when everyone is cranking their AC. But Brad explained that one of the biggest holes in the cost shift theory is that when homes generate their own electricity, they actually help offset this peak power demand. 'Normally, you expand the grid in order to serve a higher peak load. We've kept peak load constant, yet they're spending three times as much money as they did 15 years ago,' Brad said. Utilities are painting solar owners as the scapegoat for high rates, but really, it's the opposite. Research shows rooftop solar saved California ratepayers $1.5 billion in 2024 alone. Home solar supplies much-needed electricity to the grid, but Brad claims that throws a wrench in the utility's profits. 'Utilities feel threatened by customer solar and storage because it reduces their profit motive, their ability to rate base grid expansion, which is what drives their profits,' Brad explains. 'In California, there's enough solar that they feel like we're really taking weight off the grid and causing them to build less infrastructure, hurting their profits. So they've gone after us in a very strong way here, and that is spilling over into other states, sadly, where you don't have nearly as much solar. And yet this utility playbook is playing out across the country.' It comes down to simple supply and demand: Utilities are in the business of generating electricity and selling it to us. When you produce your own electricity with solar, that threatens their business model and their large paychecks. To try and simply answer the question of why your electric bill is so high, it's because our power grid is old and overloaded. And the way most utilities are fixing it is akin to slapping a very expensive band-aid on a gaping wound. Oh, and we're paying for that band-aid.
Yahoo
04-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
3 Ways New Tariffs Could Increase Your Utility Bills
Conversations on President Trump's tariff actions generally focus on how they will influence the pricing of consumer goods. Unfortunately, utility prices could also increase for many Americans. Read More: Find Out: Nearly 80% of people polled fear tariffs will increase utility costs, according to a recent survey from Payless Power. Worse yet, nearly two-thirds (64%) of people polled fear rising energy costs will make it challenging to pay their monthly bills. Here are three ways Trump's tariffs could drive up utility bills for many Americans. Americans are paying more for their electricity bills. Over 60% of Americans are paying more for their electricity compared to last year, according to a recent survey by PowerLines and Ipsos. The survey revealed that more people plan to pay more this year. Tariffs are the main cause of increasing prices on various fronts. These include increased duties on solar panels to parts needed to construct wind turbines. A turbine, for example, requires parts from numerous international sources. 'A turbine consists of thousands of subcomponents,' said Endri Lico, an analyst at the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, as he explained the problem to the New York Times. The article stated that Lico estimated that in 2023, the United States imported about $1.7 billion of wind-related components, mainly from Europe, Mexico, Vietnam and India. The increase in cost to import or manufacture may directly increase the pricing of electricity for Americans. If Canada issues retaliatory tariffs, that could also influence pricing on electricity. Discover Next: Many Americans may not be concerned about heating bills currently, as we're past winter. Unfortunately, for those currently needing to heat their homes, it's fair to expect tariffs to increase bills. The same could be true as we approach fall and winter later in the year. Natural gas is used to heat many homes, and 9% of U.S. natural gas supplies are imported from Canada, according to the American Gas Association. The Association reported that it could cause Americans to pay an additional $1.1 billion, at a minimum, annually in costs. This is also not to mention the increased tariffs on steel or aluminum used to construct power plants or pipelines. Americans could expect heightened pricing from this as well. While it may seem odd on the surface, Americans should anticipate paying more for their water bills. Water bills have been problematic of late, with monthly water payments increasing by 7.1% year-over-year, according to Bank of America. This increase isn't due to tariffs; extra duties could intensify the pain for many Americans. However, the United States uses a lot of chemicals to treat water, which could directly influence water bills. 'A lot of the chemicals that are used in the water treatment process come from outside of the United States. With the uncertainty about tariffs, those could have a downstream increase on our costs,' explained Tricia Anklan, partner at West Monroe a water utilities and electronic consulting firm, to Yahoo Finance. Heating that water could also become more expensive thanks to tariffs on steel, which is a key component of water heaters. There's no telling how long the pain will last for Americans struggling to pay utility bills. Budgetary stress could linger as long as heightened tariffs and retaliatory tariffs stay in place. More From GOBankingRates 6 Used Luxury SUVs That Are a Good Investment for Retirees How Far $750K Plus Social Security Goes in Retirement in Every US Region 7 Overpriced Grocery Items Frugal People Should Quit Buying in 2025 12 SUVs With the Most Reliable Engines Sources: Payless Power, 'Tariff Anxiety: Could Trade Policies Push Energy Bills Higher' PowerLines and Ipsos, 'Most Americans report higher electricity, gas bills compared to a year ago' Endri Lico/The New York Times, 'Tariffs Are Likely to Hit U.S. Renewable Energy' American Gas Association, 'American Gas Association Statement on President Trump's Upcoming Address to Congress ' Bank of America, 'Hard Water Bills' Tricia Anklan/Yahoo Finance, 'Why your water bill is an inflation problem that isn't budging' This article originally appeared on 3 Ways New Tariffs Could Increase Your Utility Bills
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Rising utility bills have Americans worried
As electric and gas bills rise across the country, a poll released today finds that an overwhelming majority of people in the U.S. are concerned about growing energy costs — and experiencing greater financial stress because of them. In a nationwide survey of about 2,000 adults, conducted by the consumer education nonprofit PowerLines and the polling company Ipsos in late March, 73% of respondents reported feeling concerned about rising utility bills. Nearly two-thirds of surveyed billpayers said they have seen their gas and electric bills rise over the last year, and 63% reported feeling more stressed as a result of energy costs. The results held consistent across the political spectrum, with Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike expressing similar levels of concern. The findings arrive as the Trump administration's continued attacks on clean energy — and its support for coal and other fossil fuels — threaten to raise utility bills even higher, according to energy experts. 'Bottom line is, American energy consumers are hurting and they're stressed out,' Charles Hua, executive director of PowerLines, said of the survey's findings. Yet according to the poll, most Americans aren't familiar with the state entities in charge of regulating energy utilities and setting those prices: public utility commissions. That's a problem, said Hua, because a lack of public participation prevents consumer interests from being fully considered when state regulators receive and approve rate-hike requests from utilities. In the survey, 60% of respondents said they aren't familiar with the state or local authority that oversees gas and electric bills. Around 90% of people couldn't name their public utility commission as the correct regulatory body. Meanwhile, these relatively unknown regulators have approved ballooning utility cost increases in recent years. In 2022, state utility regulators collectively approved $4.4 billion in bill increases; in 2023, they approved $9.7 billion. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, gas and electric utilities requested or received rate hikes totalling about $20 billion. Residential electricity costs have grown by nearly 30% since 2021, while gas prices have risen by 40% since 2019, far outpacing inflation, according to a separate report released today by PowerLines. The reasons behind these fast-rising rates vary by utility and state. Still, Hua singled out one driver of higher electricity rates in particular: utility spending on transmission lines and distribution systems — in other words, the poles, wires, and lines that deliver power to customers. Utilities have spent increasing amounts of money to replace aging infrastructure and repair or harden the grid after storms, wildfires, and other disasters made more likely by climate change. State rules guarantee investor-owned utilities a rate of return on those investments, creating a financial incentive to overspend on grid infrastructure that some researchers have estimated costs consumers billions of dollars each year. Volatility in global gas markets has also contributed to rising gas bills. The extent to which customers are suffering proves that the current regulatory system isn't working, said Hua. 'Eighty million Americans are struggling to pay their utility bills, and that issue is not only not going away, but it's only going to get significantly worse in the coming years.' Households that struggle to afford utilities often have no choice but to sacrifice needs like food, medicine, or basic physical comfort in order to pay their energy bills. Total utility bill debt in the U.S. has reached $17 billion, according to PowerLines, and power shutoffs due to nonpayment have risen across the country, posing potentially deadly health risks. Four in five respondents to the poll said they felt powerless to control increasing utility costs. Around 60% — across all political affiliations — said they don't think their state governments are sufficiently protecting consumers when regulating utilities. For that to change, public utility commissions need to better engage the communities they serve, said Hua. They could, for example, hold public meetings virtually or at night so that more people can attend, he said. Commissions could also allow consumers to comment on regulatory proceedings online or in person, and could provide intervenor compensation that covers the legal fees of advocates and stakeholders so that more groups can get involved in ratemaking cases. Hua added that states should invest in expanding the staff and capacity of public utility commissions and consumer advocacy offices, which are often vastly out-resourced by large investor-owned utilities. Other consumer advocates have called for a range of reforms to rein in high rates, such as implementing performance-based ratemaking, which rewards utilities for reaching certain environmental or equity goals. States could also prohibit utilities from charging customers for trade association and lobbying fees, and lower the rate of return utilities can earn on infrastructure investments. Electricity and gas bills may rise even more under the Trump administration's energy policies. Several reports have found that repealing the clean energy tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act, which some GOP lawmakers have promised to do, would significantly raise household energy costs, given that solar and wind are now far cheaper sources of electricity than coal, oil, and gas. President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs — now on pause for most countries except China — and recent executive orders to keep aging, unprofitable coal power plants running would make energy costs even more unaffordable. The administration has also targeted a popular federal assistance program that helps more than 6 million U.S. households pay for their heating and cooling bills. Early this month, Trump officials laid off the entire staff running the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and a budget proposal leaked last week eliminates the program altogether. States are still waiting on about $378 million in funding this year for utility bill assistance, and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have called for program staff to be reinstated. 'At a time when so many families are struggling to make ends meet — and tariffs are poised to drive prices even higher — it's unconscionable to rip away the help that Congress has already offered to people in need,' Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, told USA Today.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Jason Carter rules out 2026 bid for governor as wife battles brain cancer
The Brief Jason Carter, grandson of former President Jimmy Carter, says he will not seek office in 2026 due to his wife Kate's diagnosis of glioblastoma. Kate Carter, a teacher and entrepreneur, is undergoing treatment for the aggressive brain cancer; the couple has two teenage sons. Jason Carter, a former state senator and 2014 gubernatorial candidate, now leads The Carter Center and practices law in Atlanta. ATLANTA - Former Georgia state Sen. Jason Carter said he has no plans to seek the 2026 nomination because of his wife's cancer diagnosis. "For all intents and purposes, I can't imagine making a decision to run because it's the wrong time for my family," Carter, 49, told The Associated Press on Monday. What we know Carter also told The Associated Press that he is "not going to endorse anybody," but that he was "very excited" that Sen. Jason Esteves has announced that he is in the running for governor in 2026. RELATED: Sen. Jason Esteves announces campaign for governor of Georgia Katharine "Kate" Lewis Carter has glioblastoma, a highly malignant and aggressive form of brain cancer. Treatment typically involves surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible, followed by radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Jason Carter did not reveal any additional details about his wife's condition. Jason Carter is the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter, who died at the age of 100 on Dec. 29, 2024, and first lady Rosalynn Carter, who passed away on Nov. 19, 2023, at the age of 96. Carter, who served in the Georgia State Senate from 2010 to 2015, was the Democratic Party nominee for governor in Georgia in 2014. He lost to incumbent Nathan Deal by 7.9%, receiving 44% of the vote. In November 2015, Jason became Chair of the Board of Trustees of The Carter Center, the nonprofit organization founded in 1982 by his grandparents to fight for human rights and the alleviation of human suffering, prevent and resolve conflicts, improve health care, and enhance freedom and democracy. He had previously served on the board since 2009. Jason is also a lawyer and has represented clients in high-stakes trial and appellate business litigation, including breach of contract, class actions, business torts, and other complex commercial cases, according to Bondurant Mixson & Elmore. He has received numerous awards for his legal work and community service. He also wrote a book published by National Geographic titled Power Lines, which detailed the racial divides he experienced in South Africa while serving in the Peace Corps. Kate Carter is a high school teacher and former journalist with the Athens Banner-Herald. She also launched a nutmilk brand, Treehouse Naturals, with a friend in 2016. The couple has two teenage sons. What they're saying Before his announcement about his decision not to run, Jason Carter had been mentioned as a centrist candidate with high name identification who could run as a bridge between the Democrats' base and voters who might be up for grabs if President Donald Trump's popularity and the Republican brand take a dip heading into 2026, according to The Associated Press.
