Tell your legislator to stop annual increases
in our power bills!
Listen to the press conference launching the CARH campaign with Chris Estes, Director of the NC Housing Coalition; Mark Cooper, Senior Fellow for Economic Analysis at Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment; and John Runkle, attorney for Consumers Against Rate Hikes.
Amid ongoing headlines about soaring costs at nuclear construction projects across the Southeast, a broad coalition of North Carolina public interest groups today announced a statewide campaign to prevent so-called “Annual Rate Hikes” legislation that has led to soaring electric rates in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
The Consumers Against Rate Hikes coalition released a new statewide poll showing strong bipartisan opposition to legislation that would shift financial risks for new power plants by Duke Energy and Progress Energy onto the backs of small businesses, seniors, and families.
86% of NC voters would oppose a law that would allow Duke and Progress Energy Corporations to increase rates annually to pay for building nuclear power plants rather than have these corporations take the financial risk.
Dear NC Legislators, stand up for consumers by opposing any Annual Rate Hikes legislation.
Duke and Progress Energy Corporations are trying to get legislators to pass an annual rate hike bill that will allow them to raise our electricity rates every year to pay for risky nuclear power plants in advance. Even Wall Street won’t gamble its money on these projects.
As a staunch advocate for consumers here in Florida, I believe that protecting our citizens’ pocket books, particularly in these trying economic times, is of the utmost importance. We’ve learned the hard way in Florida that allowing utilities to recover the costs of a new power plant before the plant is even placed in service is unfair to consumers and bad public policy.
“The power companies want the state legislature to raise my rates – every year! My power bills could rise by 50%…That ain’t right!”
North Carolina’s economy is still struggling – income is down, unemployment is up and too many businesses are out of business. Now, power companies are asking the legislature for permission to raise your rates – every year – to build power plants that won’t produce electricity for many years. That’s just wrong!”
Consumers Against Rate Hikes today began airing radio ads in opposition to a plan by utility companies to raise electric rates to pay for nuclear power plants.
Dear Governor Purdue, As you struggle with a huge deficit, you will be considering requests by Duke Energy and Progress Energy to use taxpayer money to help prepay for up to four new nuclear power plants. This request will amount to a substantial annual utility rate increase that bypasses public review by the North Carolina Utilities Commission. It will also be an annual rate hike with no guarantee that the power plants would ever be constructed.
“I believe that it is inherently unfair for utilities to ask their customers, our constituents, to front the costs of massive and expensive construction projects that are not even gauranteed to be completed.”
Republican FL Senator Fasano in a letter to NC legislators
The risk associated with building plants is shifted from utility company shareholders to electricity customers. The result is that utilities have little reason to be cost-efficient in constructing plants. This disincentive to be efficient will lead to increased construction costs, overbuilding of plants and delays in plant construction.”
The John Locke Foundation
“Now, normally, you’d think a bill to raise electric rates on just about everybody in North Carolina would be dead-on-arrival in the legislature – but you’d be dead wrong…Not one Republican Senator has said a word against it…After their electric bills soar, when voters go to the polls looking for retribution they may have to flip a coin to decide who to vote against.”
Republican strategist Carter Wrenn
“…[The bill] sticks ratepayers with the developmental costs of ‘potential’ nuclear units. That means a utility could collect revenue on a nuclear plant that exists only on paper…saddling ratepayers with construction costs for plants in other states, and even for units that eventually get cancelled.”
Conservative commentator and columnist Rick Martinez
A dozen nonprofit advocacy groups are lining up to fight any effort to make it easier for electric utilities to raise rates to pay for nuclear plants years before the costly plants are built.
Consumer, environmental and anti-nuclear advocates said Monday they will fight proposed state legislation allowing Duke Energy to more easily pass costs of a new nuclear plant on to N.C. customers.
The flagship project of a hoped-for but not-yet-realized “nuclear renaissance,” the Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors under construction near Augusta, Ga., may cost about $900 million more than had been estimated, the Southern Company said in a filing this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission.