LA Adds Carbon Surcharge to Energy Bills
Residents of Los Angeles are going to see their energy bills go up soon. Although consumers will grumble about the rate hikes, there is a good side to this news. The increased rate is designed to provide a fund for investment in renewable energy resources. Since this is such an important part of energy development in the United States, it would not be surprising to see other cities follow LA's lead and establish rate hikes for this purpose as well.
The board of commissioners for the Los Angeles Water and Power company approved a per kilowatt hour rate hike. The rate hike is a small one: just eight tenths of one penny per kilowatt hour. However, it can result in an increase on individual energy bills of anywhere between 8% and 28% depending on the amount of energy that customers are using.
This rate hike will serve two purposes. On the one hand, it may encourage consumers to use less energy. People want to keep their bills down. As they see their energy bills rising, they may make energy-conserving efforts in their home in order to save money. This will help to conserve energy around the city.
The bigger purpose of the rate hike, however, is to help the Department of Water and Power to pay for the development of renewable energy resources. The extra money raised from the rate increase will be going into trust fund that the city has established in order to invest in both solar power and wind power. The city has a goal of switching to renewable resources within the next decade in order to end its reliance on coal for energy. This fund will help LA to meet that goal.
One complaint that consumers have about this (besides that it will cost them more money) is that it isn't clear at this point what the money would be going to support. Although it's definitely being set aside for renewable resource development, it's not earmarked for specific projects. Customers would like to see a clearer plan put into place in the near future, perhaps within the next few months when the rate hikes go into effect.
Source: http://www.scpr.org/news/2010/03/19/solar-surcharge/
Publish Date: 2010-03-24 14:55:48
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