Another in the list of unnecessary things
Why do utility ratepayers have to waste their hard-earned money on a faulty theory?
While it’s definitely taking a risk of diving into the #firstworldproblems category, I wanted to lead off with a comparison of electric bills.
In August of 2021 our household used 1,924 kWh of electricity and paid $234.71. One year later we used 46 kWh more (although our daily average was less due to billing cycle variations) and paid $24.97 more for the privilege.
In September of 2021 we used 1,954 kWh of electricity and paid $238.01. One year later we used 37 kWh more (again, a varied billing cycle since my average went down) and paid a whopping $72.09 more on our bill.
For October I have three years of comparison:
October 2020: 1,186 kWh of electricity for $145.50 (37.06 kWh per day)
October 2021: 1,733 kWh of electricity for $183.91 (54.16 kWh per day)
October 2022: 1,330 kWh of electricity for $197.53 (44.33 kWh per day)
Again, you read that last line correctly: We used 403 fewer kWh and still paid $13.62 more for it. In the two-year span our usage was in the same ballpark and it ran over $50 more. October is a tricky month because it’s our September usage and sometimes we have a warm end of summer - our best bills tend to be in April and November.
What make this really sad is that our provider is Delaware Electric Co-Op, which is considered the cheaper of the two major utilities in Delaware. (Delmarva Power used to be about 20% higher, but I have no idea how they compare now.)
Thousands of writers have put up trillions of pixels complaining about Biden administration energy policy, to little or no avail (at least until November 8.) Here in Delaware, though, we have another sneaky thief that serves simply as a wealth redistribution vehicle from utilities (read: ratepayers) to states who use the proceeds to fatten their coffers.
I began writing about the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative way back in 2008 as a Maryland resident. And I saw the scam right away, too.
(By the way, it’s the first time I’ve used my vast Substack archives so enjoy.)
Being an RGGI state has not only cost ratepayers millions of extra dollars as the utilities have to make that extortion up someplace, but it has also cost Delaware most of its electrical generation. The next to go will be the Indian River power plant in Millsboro, as David Stevenson of the Caesar Rodney Institute writes:
Over a decade ago, Delaware joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which required power plants to buy allowances to emit carbon dioxide. Initially, competitive auctions resulted in fairly low allowance prices. Participating states, unhappy with the low tax revenue, gradually changed the auction design to control ever higher auction prices. Since 2016, in-state electric generation fell from 72% to 35% of electric demand as allowance prices quadrupled.
The higher allowance fees, equivalent to a tax, hit the coal-fired Millsboro plant first, as coal has about twice the emission rate as natural gas. About 90% of in-state electric generation is produced by natural gas-powered plants, which are already seeing falling rates of generation from the tax impact. The tax rate is expected to rise another 70% by 2030. We can expect the remaining power plants to attempt to close, leading to another round of electric price increases for transmission upgrades and backup power solutions.
The intent of the RGGI tax was to lower emissions. Delaware emissions have fallen as we generate less in-state power. However, electric demand has stayed about the same, and we now meet that demand with generation in other states fired by coal and natural gas. By importing power, we are simply exporting emissions elsewhere. That actually increases emissions when transmission line losses are considered.
So the Millsboro plant is closing twenty years earlier than scheduled, leaving some good jobs on the table and the state’s electricity users more and more dependent on other states to supply their power.
Because of foolish energy carveouts in state law, DEC has had to spend our rapidly increasing bills on solar generation. In one example, they are taking up 35 acres of valuable land to build a solar farm that supposedly can power 900 homes, farms, and businesses. (However, that’s less than 1% of their customer base - a group that still needs electricity at night and on cloudy days.)
But the thing about the RGGI is that they don’t produce a single watt of electricity, and in the layman’s terms of how they’re affecting the climate they are a fart in the wind.
(My favorite question to environmentalist wackos: what is our normal climate? Is it the period there were grapes were grown in the north of England or was it the Little Ice Age?)
Accurate records of our weather only go back about a century, so the correlation of our human advancement isn’t necessarily the causation of so-called climate change. To think otherwise is folly and foolishness, but unfortunately there are too many power-addled people in government to do us all a favor and disband this thing called RGGI. Our best hope is a governor with stones, like Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, who will call a spade a spade and say enough.
It’s something to work toward in 2024. Unfortunately, I don’t think Dan Cox in Maryland has pushed the issue in his bid for the governor’s chair, which is a missed opportunity when their utility rates are sky-high, too.