Free Republic

Over the past few months, we’ve asked Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU) questions about how they spend ratepayer dollars on advertising and sponsorships. Stay tuned for a future Springs Taxpayers United article about sponsorships. Right now, we’ll focus exclusively on the CSU advertising budget. We wondered why a monopoly utility needs to advertise at all. No one in their service area has a choice on which utility to use. The local advertising company Vladmir Jones handles the advertising account for CSU. Through a Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) request, we asked for all of the 2022 advertising expenditures. Vladmir Jones invoices...

Representative K.C. Becker and Senator Faith Winter have introduced legislation that would give Xcel Energy a green light and blank check to prematurely close existing power plants, replace them with expensive, intermittent resources, and then force captive electric ratepayers to pick up the tab with interest for the massive fuel switching scheme and workforce transition plans. ... Colorado Energy Plan (CEP) .. The monopoly utility is more than willing to build and build and build so it can fuel switch to utility-scale wind, solar, and batteries (which don’t really exist yet) at the expense of Colorado ratepayers. Instead of saving...

The House passed the administration’s offshore wind power bill Friday amid accusations Gov. Martin O’Malley secured votes on the House Economic Matters Committee with disparity grants to committee members’ districts. “Those of you who have been here longer than two weeks know there’s a lot of complicated pressures that go into making a bill pass or fail,” said House Minority Leader Anthony O’Donnell. “Sometimes it takes a little nudge, sometimes it takes a carrot, and sometimes it takes a stick.” The disparity grant program in Maryland provides subsidies to jurisdictions with income tax receipts that fall below 75% of the...

In April, when Public Utilities Commission Chairman Michael Peevey persuaded the PUC board to back his plan to use $600 million generated by a 10-year surcharge on some energy bills to create a PUC-run global warming think tank, the response was far chillier than he probably expected. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was enthusiastic, but he was practically alone. Experts on utility law questioned whether it would be legal for an agency created to regulate utilities to force ratepayers to subsidize an agency think tank. Consumer groups such as The Utilities Reform Network questioned the fairness of imposing an additional de facto...

AUSTIN -- Texas ratepayers could be on the hook for $3 billion to $6.4 billion to build new transmission lines so wind-power turbines can connect to the state power grid, according to preliminary estimates released Wednesday. The eye-popping cost projections by operators of the Texas power grid could equate to as much as $320 for every man, woman and child getting power from the grid, although the impact on individual bills remains unclear. The money would be used to build lines that theoretically would encourage more wind-power development in the Panhandle and West Texas. Wind-power advocates say the potential expense...

Energy firm settles suit with state By Dale Kasler -- Bee Staff Writer Published 2:15 am PST Saturday, January 15, 2005 Get weekday updates of Sacramento Bee headlines and breaking news. Sign up here. California officials obtained a $749.7 million energy-crisis refund from a bankrupt power company Friday in an offbeat deal that includes cash, an unfinished power plant and an IOU whose true value is unknown.

Federal regulators must order retroactive refunds to California residents for electricity overcharges they paid during the energy crisis, a U.S. appeals court ruled today in a decision that could force power companies to return about $2.8 billion. The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ``abused its administrative discretion by declining to order refunds'' because the agency ``improperly concluded that retroactive refunds were not legally available.'' The court, however, declined to order refunds itself and said that should be determined by the federal regulators. It wasn't immediately known whether the energy companies at the heart...