Already frustrated and angered by high gas prices, many Americans are now hit by rapidly rising electricity bills, compounding the financial cost of inflation for individuals and businesses.
The national average residential electricity rate increased 8 percent in January from a year earlier, the largest annual increase in more than a decade, according to the New York Times.
The latest figures, from February, show an annual rise of almost 4 percent, reaching highest level for that month and approaching the summer rates, which are usually the most expensive.
In Florida, Hawaii, Illinois and New York, rates increased by 15 percent, according to the latest figures from the Department of Energy.
Combined with a seasonal increase in electricity use as people turn on air conditioners is air, the higher rates will leave many people paying much more for energy this summer than last year.
The immediate reason for the jump in electricity rates is that the war in Ukraine has raised the already high cost of natural gas, which is burned to produce about 40 percent of the electricity in the United States.
And supply chain chaos has made routine network maintenance and upgrades more expensive.
Lo What is particularly worrying, energy experts said, is that these short-term outages could be just the beginning.
They fear electricity rates will rise rapidly for years because utility companies Utilities and regulators are realizing that they need to harden power grids against natural disasters related to climate change, like the winter storm that left Te have been without power for days last year.
Power companies are also spending more on new transmission lines, batteries, wind turbines, solar parks and other equipment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“This is an affordability emergency,” said Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, which represents taxpayers in California, where rates in February increased 12 percent from the previous year, and utility companies public are asking regulators to approve new increases.
“If you want to control inflation, one of the things you have to control is energy costs”.
Natural gas prices have risen in recent months as US producers have shipped more fuel to Europe, which wants to use less Russian gas.
The services Public services in some places, such as Hawaii and Puerto Rico, depend on some power plants fueled by oil, which has also become much more expensive. The price of coal, which accounts for roughly 20 percent of US electricity, has also risen.
The Biden administration has been urging the industry to produce more oil and natural gas, but energy experts say it could take a year or two to significantly increase supplies.
Electricity demand is also increasing due to climate change. The National Weather Service expects this summer to be hotter than average in most of the country.
People with less purchasing power could resent the increase more, because most moratoriums about power outages during the pandemic are over.
Last month, the White House sought to soften the blow of higher bills by making available hundreds of millions of dollars for energy assistance in the home.
“Consumers are going to pay the price for this,” said Gordon van Welie, CEO from ISO New England, the electric grid operator in the Northeast, where electricity rates are among the highest in the country. “The reality is that we are going to depend on gas for a long time.”
The problem is that the construction of new wind and solar installations and the related power lines and batteries will have an initial cost.
“Wind, solar and hydropower are exactly what is needed,” said Mark Cooper, senior fellow in economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School. . “We should have advanced much more in the transition, which we have not done”.
Although these technologies use less energy than furnaces and gasoline cars, they place new demands on the power grid, forcing utilities to build more wind and solar farms and power lines, van Welie said.
As utilities spend more, rates will go up even more. The national average residential electricity rate in the first two months of the year was nearly 14 cents per kilowatt-hour. The Energy Information Administration, a federal agency, forecasts that rates a year from now will average about 15 cents per kilowatt-hour, or $150 dollars per month for typical household using 1,000 kilowatt-hours.
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