Robert Walton of UtilityDive reports on why electricity prices are rising.
- Residential electricity costs rose by 3.6% in the past year and is expected to hit a three-decade high in 2025.
- The volatility of fuel costs has something to do with this increase, but the main culprit is the cost of transmission.
- Monopoly utilities are not required to competitively bid for transmission projects, which increases costs and those costs are passed down to consumers.
- At the same time an inefficient permitting process delays project completion times which hurts the reliability of the grid and raises electricity prices.
“The BLS inflation data released yesterday is ‘especially damning,’ said Paul Cicio, chair of the Electricity Transmission Competition Coalition. While electricity generation costs have fallen due to low natural gas prices, ‘transmission costs continue to accelerate,’ he said.”
Read the full article here.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.
