The public benefits charges on utility bills were a hot topic at the state capitol this week, as lawmakers heard from customers who are fed up with the rising costs.
We here in Connecticut are one of the smallest states in the country, and we continue to have one of the highest rates for electricity.
Now, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are working on solutions. But will we see any relief to our sticker shock we've been dealing with for the past few years?
Republican leader in the Senate, Stephen Harding, discusses his party's plan.
Mike Hydeck: Welcome back, Steve. Good to see you. So one of the things you guys are focusing on is the public benefits charge. Remind people, first what that is, and then what you'd like to see.
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Stephen Harding: Yeah, so basically, what the public benefit charges is, it's nothing more than a hidden tax. It's all these different social programs. There's some hedge bets with the market as well built into it. Its purchase of different green renewables is sometimes three or four times the market rate being baked into your bill. So it's really a government charges that really should be on the state budget, baked in as a hidden tax and basically using Eversource and UI as tax collectors. And that's what the public benefit charge really, truly is.
Mike Hydeck: So when you break it down, some of it is a contract with keeping Millstone nuclear power plant online. That was when gas was super expensive. Nuclear was cheaper. Things have changed, so now we're kind of stuck in that deal. So there's a lot of money from the public benefits charge there. There's also other things, like investments in green energy, which may be kind of on the back burner because electric vehicles aren't selling as much as they could. What would you like to see done with that public benefits charge? Say, if it's on my bill, it's 300 bucks. You want it to go where?
Stephen Harding: I'd like to get it phased out and have it on the state budget, and analyzing the state budget. It doesn't even have to go on the state budget necessarily. I think the argument can be, and I think even some Democrats have admitted, some of these programs we probably would find in the light of day, probably are not worthwhile investments. I think it would be a huge savings in the end. It would be off your electric bill. It would be far more equitable. It wouldn't be baked in inside of a hidden cost, as I mentioned, and it would see the light of the day in a budget process. Some of these investments we'd continue to make, but others I think we would find are probably inefficient programs we shouldn't be paying for them.
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Mike Hydeck: If I, as a rate payer, wanted to go, 'Hey, let me see line by line, what goes into that public benefits charge.' Could I look that up somewhere? Is that possible?
Stephen Harding: And that's part of the problem. There's really nowhere you can see that. You can talk to PURA and PURA probably has an idea. In fact, we had the PURA chairwoman come before us for renomination. She wasn't even sure how many programs were baked into the cost. I mean, that's how much lack of transparency there is surrounding this public benefit. And I think that's part of the problem. That's why you're seeing so much understandable frustration from the public on this.
Mike Hydeck: So let's look big picture. How do we prepare? We know it's all coming, it may take 10 years from now, for the massive amounts of electricity we're all going to start consuming. Whether it's the giant data centers to deal with AI, because that takes up so much energy. President Trump is now supporting cryptocurrency. That's a huge amount of electric. How do we kind of go from there? We got to pay for it somehow. Where do we do it?
Stephen Harding: So one of the things in the Republican plan you're going to see is that you're going to see an effort to try to increase our supply. But most importantly, to increase it at an affordable rate. What we're seeing by Democrats in Hartford is this continued Green New Deal initiative in which we're forcing ourselves to purchase these renewables at four or five times the market.
Mike Hydeck: Like wind or solar?
Stephen Harding: That's exactly right. What Senate Republicans are saying is, 'our primary goal right now has to be affordability.' We have the second highest electric rates in the country. We find that to be unacceptable. Our goal needs to be getting a greater supply and an affordable rate as a primary focus.
Mike Hydeck: So how do we get a greater supply? We have ISO New England. That's it, right? What's our other choice?
Stephen Harding: Part of is, we're at the end of a pipeline. That's problem two. But I think there's ways that we could tap into natural gas. I think that has to be a huge aspect of looking at that. There's ways that we can invest in natural gas right here in Connecticut. I think Governor Malloy, that was a huge aspect of his administration, what he tried to do. Governor Lamont, you've seen take a significant step back. When we're looking at it now, I think we need to take a renewed approach at that.
Mike Hydeck: So when you say natural gas, are you talking about LNG tankers coming in? Are you talking about tapping into our own soil?
Stephen Harding: I think tapping into the soil, or basically utilizing expansion to some of these pipelines in some areas where it might be efficient to do that. There's different areas. And that's why you're going to see our plan, the Republican plan, has a study on this. We had to study it, and we don't have all the answers right now. We had to speak with the experts and what works for our state. But supply is a huge aspect of it.
Mike Hydeck: So when the grid upgrades are made, how do we pay for that? For example, we did an investigative story where Eversource is paying to upgrade the grids in certain parts of New England, but they may not be doing it efficiently. Can we check on things like that? Is there one of those things where, like, 'look, Eversource wants millions of dollars from the state to try to make our grid stronger.' How do we do that? Like, how do we make sure it's being upgraded properly?
Stephen Harding: That's ultimately where PURA has to come in. And that's why it's so critical regarding who we place on PURA. We just had a discussion in the building just last week about the chairwoman getting re-elected to that and the entire discussion, unfortunately, by the Democrats, was surrounding getting people, well connected people, jobs. The discussion should have been around accountability on the electric rate, on the electric companies, and at the same exact time, how we're going to improve our infrastructure and reduce our electric bills. Unfortunately, for far too long in this building in Hartford, we haven't been having that conversation. It's about time we do.
Mike Hydeck: And the supply thing is going to be a huge part of that.
Stephen Harding: Huge.
