States are finally starting to go after gas and electric companies that make customers pay for their lobbying costs.
 | By Eliza Barclay Climate Editor, Opinion |
If you've ever felt a little suspicious of some of the fees on your electric or gas bill, your instinct may have been right: Your utility company probably didn't tell you that it can spend the money it collects from you on lobbying, public relations spending and dues to political groups that represent the industry. |
And the lobbying is especially pernicious when the companies use the political system to extend the life of fossil fuel-powered plants and try to make it harder for customers to install rooftop solar. Utility companies, Pomerantz writes, "will support a clean energy transition only if it happens exclusively on their terms and at their pace — a stance at odds with the scope and urgency of the herculean task of decarbonizing our electric grid." |
Pomerantz says the good news is that three states — Colorado, Connecticut and Maine — have passed laws forbidding utilities to use ratepayers' money to cover lobbying costs. Others should follow, he writes. More transparency and fines for utilities that charge customers for their political activities will go a long way to discourage this kind of counterproductive influence as the climate crisis grows worse, Pomerantz argues. |
Here's what our readers are saying: |
I consider it a primary responsibility of the power company to lobby for lower costs on behalf of its customers. Energy should be cheap and plentiful; it's what drives the economy and quite literally fuels our standard of living, which is the envy of most of the rest of the world. — Christopher, Columbus, Ohio |
I like to think about how solar will affect renters like me. As more families make the switch to solar to benefit us all, the renters of that area will be left out (why would a landlord upgrade to solar?). Our utility bills increase and we will bear the burden of paying more for our energy to prop up shareholder benefits. As a renter moving every two years I will have few of the benefits of solar. The P.U.C. and corporatized energy companies are a drain on the system that was created largely by using taxpayer money. The energy companies need to be seized by the state. — Jay, San Diego |
Any rational and informed leadership of the nation would declare a national climate emergency, and then immediately nationalize the utilities as well as the oil and gas companies. Profit motive has to be taken out of the calculus as we figure out how many of us are going to survive the future. — WR_of_NJ, N.J. |
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