Campaign for Fair Electric Rates…

How are you going to afford clothing if you can’t even pay your electric bill?

With the recent economy, I thought I would pass along this info about the Campaign for Fair Electric Rates. This campaign was created to inform you of an issue that affects all of us: the recent deregulation of many of America’s nonprofit electrical utilities.

For instance, citizens in my state pay on average 40 percent (4.4 cents more per kilowatt-hour) more for their electricity bills solely because of electricity deregulation! It’s insane!

The Campaign for Fair Electric Rates ( www.FairElectricRates.net ) is committed to raising awareness of this price discrepancy between regulated and deregulated states. If this issue is of interest to you, please feel free to visit the Campaign’s Web site for additional information. You may wish to pass this along to your friends or even writing your local member of the US House of Representatives.

We’ve compiled a bit of info for you…

The Background:

Local and state governments began creating not-for-profit public power utilities well over a century ago to guarantee reliable and reasonably priced electricity to every residence and business in their communities.

Public power utilities serve one in six customers in the United States – in more than 2,000 cities and towns – and serve as a good “yardstick” to measure whether privately owned utilities are charging fair prices and providing reliable service.

The Problem:

Since the early 1990s, federal efforts to de-regulate prices and other aspects of wholesale electricity markets in some regions have let private energy companies charge customers, including public power systems, unreasonably high, inflated rates in the wholesale electricity market. Since public power systems buy almost three quarters of the electricity they sell to their own consumers in these markets, they have been hit hard. But they are not alone — electric consumers served by for-profit electric utilities are being charged too much as well.

The new system discourages investment in the critical new power plants the nation will need in the near future. And the high rates divert to the pockets of electric generators and their shareholders precious dollars that should be spent on new investments in cleaner, greener electric power. The government, in the words of Connecticut’s attorney general, “created a Frankenstein monster.”

The Solution:

More than 40 consumer and public interest groups, industrial power users and trade associations asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in December 2007 to reexamine the changes it has made to wholesale electricity markets over the last 15 years. These changes were meant to create effective competition but have instead made the system much less fair. The American Public Power Association has also filed with the Commission authoritative research studies showing that, contrary to the intent of such regulatory changes, the wholesale electric market remains rife with problems, including lack of new investment and largely phony “competition.”

FERC denied the request from these groups in March 2008. It is therefore time to ask Congress to intervene by holding oversight hearings on the wholesale markets and urge FERC to ensure that the current markets protect consumers from unjust and unreasonable rates.

Please contact your Representative and Senator, and let them know that consumers and businesses are suffering, and is time that action is taken to ensure that consumers pay fair electric rates.

If you would like to review our Q&A sheet on electric rates, please Click Here To Download the document. (Microsoft Word doc)