White House on Permitting Reform
Full speech: Senior Advisor John Podesta outlines the Administration’s position on permitting reform.
PUF's Where's Energy
Rate Runup Moderating
February’s Consumer Price Index for electricity was up 12.9 percent year-over-year. March’s CPI for electricity was up by less, 10.2 percent year-over-year.
And now April’s CPI for electricity is in. April’s was up by even less, 8.4 percent year-over-year.
This is the clearest sign yet that the runup in residential electric rates is moderating. It was a little rough there for a while. Driven by the abrupt rise in natural gas prices in the spring and summer of last year from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Penny on the Dollar
Californians’ residential electric bills averaged just nine-tenths of one percent of all their expenditures on goods and services in the year 2021. 0.91 percent to be precise. Significantly less than a penny on the dollar.
This according to the data used by the U.S. Commerce Department to calculate the Gross Domestic Product.
California’s average was well below the national average, 1.26 percent. Per kilowatt-hour rates are high in California, as compared to other states, but kilowatt-hour consumption is low.
Electric Bills Vary
Eighteen thousand and five hundred households responded to the U.S. Department of Energy’s extraordinarily comprehensive 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey. Some of the results just made available on residential electric bills I find most interesting:
Residential electric bills vary significantly by region. No surprise that the average in the sunny south is the highest, at $129 monthly. And that the average in the whopping west is the lowest, at $101 monthly. The midwest and northeast averages are in the middle, at $108 and $112 monthly, respectively.
Gas is Ubiquitous
88 percent of California homes use natural gas. That according to the extraordinarily comprehensive Residential Energy Consumption Survey that the U.S. Department of Energy conducted in 2020.
88 percent is a lot. It means that only about one in eight homes in the Golden State do not use natural gas.
In New York, the percentage of homes that use natural gas is 78 percent. That’s lower than in California. But it’s still real high.
Senator (former Commissioner) Cramer on Nuclear
With humor and fervor, Sen. Kevin Cramer gave the closing remarks at a conference in New York that gathered just about everybody leading the advanced nuclear energy revolution.
Survey on Power's State and Future
Take our two-minute, eight-question survey.
Edison Congress
If you’re in operations or engineering at an electric utility, be in the room where it happens.
West Virginia Wants You
The Public Service Commission of West Virginia is seeking Utilities Analysts.
Santa Fe Grill
Thirty-four of the nation’s two hundred and three state utility Commissioners. All part of the Commissioners’ Grill, the extraordinary two-and-a-half-hour session that concludes the conference. Current Issues 2023 that is, New Mexico State University’s Center for Public Utilities annual meeting next month in Santa Fe.
Anyone who has ever attended this NMSU event over the years knows there’s nothing like it. Over serious and light-hearted conversations too about utility regulation, you really get to know your colleagues in the service of the public interest.