Feature
Warning: A Pillar of Utility Regulation May Be About To Topple
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I’m sorry if that sounds insulting to the many people with whom I am in regular contact at the state’s regulated electric, gas, and water utilities.
InDepthNH.org (https://indepthnh.org/tag/donald-m-kreis/)
I’m sorry if that sounds insulting to the many people with whom I am in regular contact at the state’s regulated electric, gas, and water utilities.
By signing on to the Zellem Report, the three PUC commissioners have now fatally compromised their impartiality and, I respectfully suggest, must disqualify themselves from ruling on the Triennial Energy Efficiency Plan the utilities are scheduled to file in July.
What a year 2022 has been for the state’s beleaguered electric customers. Rates soared to astronomical levels – and now, you might conclude, our four utilities even managed to ruin Christmas for thousands and thousands of people.
People seem to smile in the face of the habit I have acquired in recent years of proclaiming Chanukah the “Jewish Festival of Energy Efficiency.” But it’s no joke.
As natural gas and, especially, electric rates have soared in recent months there is widespread concern that utilities, their shareholders, and their executives are profiting handsomely at the expense of struggling ratepayers.
Reading the recently issued New Hampshire 10-Year State Energy Strategy made me think of my new hero, the free-market economist Tyler Cowen.
New Hampshire doesn’t care about who owns its public utilities. But maybe it should.
“Energy justice requires that equity be part of energy policy.” So, declares Shalanda H. Baker, a professor of law, public policy and urban affairs at Northeastern University, in her 2021 book Revolutionary Power.
A pilot project with big implications.