Free Republic

MANCHESTER, N.H. — New Hampshire officials are warning residents to prepare for higher utility bills, with electricity rates expected to rise this year and one utility proposing more than a 100% increase. According to the Office of the Consumer Advocate, several factors are at work in driving up energy costs. One is that New England heavily relies on natural gas, which means our electric bills in the region are tethered to the global market, which has been shaken by the war in Ukraine. "Unfortunately, I have to deliver the bad news that consumers can expect some pretty drastic increases in...

Household electricity bills will rise by 29.8% for the typical family and gas bills will go up by 14.4%, Italy’s energy regulatory authority Arera confirmed in a press release last week. The new national tariffs came into effect on Friday, the start of the fourth quarter of 2021. The increase comes amid surging energy costs across Europe, and beyond.The price rise passed on to Italian consumers could’ve reached 45 percent, Arera said, if the government had not stepped in to cap the new rise in rates. The Italian government last week announced measures costing three billion euros aimed at limiting...

In 2001, Colorado electricity consumers enjoyed some of the lowest electric rates in the country. The 15 years since haven’t been so kind to ratepayers. For more than a decade, elected officials, PUC commissioners, industry and advocates have told Colorado ratepayers that they could transform the state’s electricity generation away from coal and toward industrial wind, solar and natural gas with little cost to ratepayers. However, the actual numbers tell a much different story. Colorado electricity rates have risen sharply – 62.1 percent – across residential, commercial and industrial sectors, despite a slight decrease in recent years. Colorado electricity rates...

In a decision that evokes former President Obama’s environmental agenda, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) on March 23, 2017, expanded its authority in a way that’s likely to drive up electricity rates. Every four years, Xcel Energy undergoes a resource planning process that outlines their ability to meet ratepayers’ electricity demand. They present portfolios containing cost analyses regarding the utility’s generation, and the Commission selects the “lowest cost resources available to provide the company with enough capacity and energy to in turn be able to provide customers with reliable electricity.” However, in the 2016 Energy Resource Plan, the Public...

Across all sectors of Colorado the cost of electricity has skyrocketed more than 67 percent between 2001 and 2014, easily exceeding median income growth and the expected rate of inflation . ... For all sectors between 2001 and 2014, the cost per kilowatthour jumped from just over 6 cents to more than 10 cents, or 67.11 percent. ... the data for the remaining sectors emphasizes the double impact that increased energy costs have in the form of rapidly escalating electricity rates on Colorado ratepayers, who see not only their own personal energy costs rise, but are hit a second time...

The cost of electricity for Colorado residents skyrocketed 63 percent between 2001 and 2014, far outpacing median income in the state at just 24 percent over the same time period ... Retail residential electricity rates increased from 7.47 cents per kilowatthour in 2001 to 12.18 cents per kilowatthour by 2014, a 63.1 percent hike. Coloradans median income, however, went up just 24.1 percent, from $49,397 to $61,303. Median income in Colorado actually declined between 2008 and 2012. ... Not to mention the state's many business owners, including small business owners, who face the same hikes in energy costs that could...

Ever since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its Clean Power Plan proposal this past June, a number of analyses have been conducted to try and determine the total cost of the regulation to electricity consumers. A report released this morning by Energy Ventures Analysis (EVA), however, goes a step further. In addition to the Clean Power Plan, EPA has recently finalized, proposed, or will soon propose a slew of environmental regulations affecting the electric power sector. These include new National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ozone and particulate matter, the Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) to...

In early 2008, candidate Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that "under my plan ... electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." Obama was referring to his plan to cap greenhouse-gas emissions, which would, among other things, effectively choke off coal as an energy source. He was just as fond of high gasoline prices, telling CNBC in June 2008 — as gas prices shot up to $4 a gallon — that he "would have preferred a gradual adjustment." Six years later, and Obama has succeeded.

A survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the average income for families of all sorts decreased from 2012 to 2013 by $103 to $65,069 before taxes, but their expenses went up by $777 a year to $51,408. ... The biggest share of the increased expenses of the average American household went to transportation, which cost a total of $8,999 a year, or $494 more than the previous year, as a result of purchase prices going up.

… The government predicts that the renewable energy surcharge added to every consumer’s electricity bill will increase from 5.3 cents today to between 6.2 and 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour—a 20-percent price hike. German consumers already pay the highest electricity prices in Europe. But because the government is failing to get the costs of its new energy policy under control, rising prices are already on the horizon. Electricity is becoming a luxury good in Germany, and one of the country’s most important future-oriented projects is acutely at risk. After the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan two and a half years...

Should energy consumers pay extra taxes to fund government-mandated and subsidized renewable energy technologies? "Absolutely yes," says John Bryson, President Obama's nominee for Commerce Secretary. He made the remark at a meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California in 2009 and went on to extol the virtues of hidden rates in California, a state encumbered with some of the nation's highest electricity and unemployment rates. Bryson, retired CEO of the electric utility Southern California Edison (SCE) and its parent company Edison International, excused the practice, saying, "That's been a part of the regulatory environment for the investor-owned utilities for as...

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a bill that would give the Attorney General the right to shut down websites with a court order if copyright infringement is deemed “central to the activity” of the site — regardless if the website has actually committed a crime. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) is among the most draconian laws ever considered to combat digital piracy, and contains what some have called the “nuclear option,” which would essentially allow the Attorney General to turn suspected websites “off.” COICA is the latest effort by Hollywood, the recording industry and...

Regulations: Call it cap-and-trade or bait-and-switch, but John Kerry and Joe Lieberman continue to tilt at windmills with a bill to restrain energy growth in the name of saving the planet.IBD Exclusive Series: American Freedom And Prosperity Under AttackThe bill introduced Wednesday and sponsored by the two senators is called the American Power Act, an Orwellian phrase if ever there was one. Like President Obama's offshore drilling program, for every "incentive" there is a restriction. It's as if Hamlet were to be appointed Secretary of Energy. The legislation has little to do with developing America's vast domestic energy supply. It's...

Bill Schrader uses a lot of electricity at his 5,200-square-feet house in Alamo, particularly when the air conditioning runs during the sweltering summer months... the Schraders were among the 17 percent of PG&E customers statewide who paid the highest prices for electricity in the utility's current five-tiered rate system designed to reward conservation and punish big energy users with high bills... PG&E has proposed a new rate plan that many fear could both discourage energy conservation and stall California's solar market... The proposed rate structure, announced last week, would replace the current five tiers with three... Customers currently in "Tier...

"Under my plan, the cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."

<p>Electricity rates are likely to go up this fall, thanks to meager snowpacks in the Cascades and throughout the Columbia River basin.</p> <p>The lack of snow translates into low stream flows for power-generating dams.</p> <p>"The longer this dry winter continues, the prospects are very high that we will request a process to put a rate increase into effect," Bonneville Power Administration spokesman Bill Murlin said Wednesday. "That's not to say we will do it; it just says the chances are pretty good."</p>

<p>California's 1996 electricity deregulation law promised that by April 1, 2002 -- this very day -- your power bill would be 20 percent lower.</p> <p>This is not an April Fools' joke. Anything but.</p> <p>The harsh reality is that average power rates went up about 40 percent last year, the state's biggest utility went bankrupt, and it is unclear where we're going to get our juice by the end of the year.</p>