by Anshul Gupta, Policy & Research Director at Kingston-based New Yorkers for Clean Power and a member of the leadership team of The Climate Reality Project’s New York State Coalition.
Local lawmakers recently joined advocates in Kingston to call for the passage of the NY Home Energy Affordable Transition (HEAT) Act in the upcoming state budget. This bill could provide relief from escalating home energy bills for millions of New Yorkers by directing the Public Service Commission to implement the state’s goal of limiting households’ energy burdens to 6 percent of earnings. It would also protect “natural” gas customers of all incomes from future price spirals.
Many New Yorkers are unaware that outdated state laws allow gas hookups worth thousands of dollars each to be given away at no or minimal cost to new customers. Existing customers are forced to pick up the tab that grows by more than $200 million each year, raising everyone’s bills. Luring new customers with free hookups adds unnecessary gas demand, which helps raise supply prices. With the US becoming the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas, the era of cheap gas is over.
“Natural” gas is mostly fracked methane – a climate super pollutant – and the utilities like Central Hudson claim that they are advancing the state’s climate goals by imposing massive rate hikes on their customers for replacing leak-prone pipes. That is just clever paltering though, because New York’s climate Scoping Plan emphatically recommends strategic planning and eventual downsizing of the gas network, not wastefully laying brand-new pipes at the cost of up to $6 million per mile.
Our laws allow the utilities a 9–10 percent return on all these investments at ratepayer expense, and the costs are added to gas bills based on an anticipated 60–80 years of service life that the new pipes will never see. Heating and cooking with gas isn’t just going out of style, it will also be…
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