The Energy & Policy Institute estimates electric utilities raked in $244 billion in profit from household bills between 2021-2025 – roughly 13% of total consumer bills went to corporate profits over that time.
In an era of inflation, when prices are rising across our economy, Americans just can’t afford to foot the bill for outsized corporate profits. Fortunately, government officials have options available to protect their constituents – if they choose to act.
Let’s keep privatizing utilities and see if things start get better despite all evidence to the contrary thus far.
In Washington state PSE is the utility company for electricity and gas.
And oddly enough they are also the reason we can’t have plug-in balcony solar. PSE says it would be too dangerous and expensive to make “their grid” safe for cheaper energy prices for their customers.
Funny how that works.
They don’t cover the whole state - just the Puget Sound area and not all of that is electrcity. We have a bunch of PUDs, which is a far superior model in my mind. I’d be willing to organize to get PSE out.
I had lived in areas of WA that have PUDs, and you are absolutely right I totally forgot about them. Which is about as big as a compliment that one can give a state or muni institution: so good at their job their fade into the wallpaper.
In my local area, there have been several posts over the last couple of weeks across the standard platforms with people complaining about excessive prices, and price increases. Some folks are sharing examples where costs for electricity have increased 40% year-over-year, and yet we live in an area that’s primarily supported by hydroelectric, and have generally low energy costs. The deregulation and desire for utilities to turn a profit are killing people, without exaggeration.
We had a milder winter this year than last, but my natural gas system (brand new, energy efficient) still had a bill $100 more. Bullshit theft
