How much is your electricity bill this summer? Is it killing you?
Well, if you think it’s bad already, get ready, because it’s about to get much, much worse.
Take the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, for example. In 2021, the Los Angeles City Council tasked the DWP with “developing a strategic long-term resource plan to achieve 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2035, in a way that is equitable and imposes minimal burden on consumers.”
How are you?
On 1 July, DWP’s Office of Public Accountability, also known as the ratepayer advocacy group, published a report reviewing DWP’s Strategic Long Term Resource Plan 2022, which was issued to the DWP Board in July 2023.
Here are the results:
The monthly bill for a single-family home would rise from the current $144 to as much as $550, assuming monthly consumption of 700 kWh.
LADWP staff examined four different paths to achieving “100% clean energy” by 2035 or 2045 and decided to recommend the one that would increase monthly bills by an average of 7.7% per year.
“The anticipated costs and impact on fees/bills may require further discussion,” the Ratepayer Representative’s Office said.
Yes, further discussion would be useful.
The report points out that Senate Bill 100, which requires “100% clean energy by 2045,” bases that calculation on retail sales. The share of “clean energy” in electricity generation required by that 2019 bill is actually only 90%.
But the consumer advocate says the cost of increasing that 90% to 100% to meet Los Angeles City Council requirements would be more than $20 billion, more than four times LADWP’s power grid budget for fiscal year 2021-22. “The average charge per LADWP customer would be more than $12,500,” the report said.
LA’s mandate is just one of California’s idiotic directives.
In 2006, California passed the Global Warming Solutions Act, Assembly Bill 32, which gave the California Air Resources Board the task of establishing regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Today, CARB’s regulations micromanage every corner of California’s economy. Reducing greenhouse gases means tough measures in agriculture, power generation, industry, construction, transportation, recycling and waste management, according to CARB’s Scoping Plan.
“The final modeling of the scoping plan shows increased ambition,” CARB’s website states. “It projects a 48% reduction in greenhouse gases in 2030 below 1990 levels, exceeding our statutory target of reducing emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030.”
At what price? And who will pay it?
Of course you do. CARB enforces its greenhouse gas reductions with a cap-and-trade program that requires refineries, electric utilities and manufacturers to buy permits to emit greenhouse gases. These additional costs raise the price of gasoline, diesel, electricity and everything made or transported in California. You pay for it with higher prices for food and other essential goods that contribute to California’s particularly high cost of living.
Other costly idiocy includes plans to ban “new fossil gas capacity in the electricity sector.”
A look at the state’s daily and nightly power supply on CAISO.com, California’s grid operator, shows that without natural gas, we’d all be in the dark. As of 11:15 p.m. Thursday night, for example, California’s electricity demand was 28,585 megawatts, and 10,152 megawatts of the state’s supply, or over 35%, was generated by natural gas. Another 5,487 megawatts was supplied by imported power generated in other states that don’t share California’s disdain for reliable energy.
If you plug in an electric car at night, it will charge with natural gas. If you want to charge it with “renewable” solar and wind energy, take another look at the LADWP’s estimate of what impact that will have on your electricity bill.
This underscores the insanity of California’s slow-motion mandate to ban the sale of cars and trucks with internal combustion engines (ICE) and force a shift to electric vehicles. A lawsuit filed against CARB in 2022 by The Two Hundred for Homeownership, a California nonprofit, seeks to overturn the Advanced Clean Cars II order. “CARB’s 2035 ban on the sale of new internal combustion engine vehicles will result in disproportionate harm to poor and working families in California’s inland and rural communities,” the lawsuit states, “including in majority-minority communities who face long commutes.”
The Two Hundred for Homeownership is the successor organization to The Two Hundred, a coalition of civil rights leaders that sued CARB in 2018 over regulations that made housing more expensive and less available under the guise of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from commuting. The lawsuit raised important questions about how greenhouse gas regulations have restricted housing construction, but because CARB’s 2017 Scoping Plan was later replaced by the 2022 Scoping Plan, a superior court in Fresno ruled that the lawsuit lacked merit.
Still, what The Two Hundred said then remains true. Arbitrary regulations that restrict housing construction to limit greenhouse gas emissions are hurting California families who miss the chance to become homeowners and build intergenerational wealth. “Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) is a misguided regulation that increases the cost of homes in some of California’s last affordable neighborhoods by $50,000 to $1,000,000,” the group’s website states. “It is imperative that this tax be repealed for low- and moderate-income homebuyers.”
Most importantly, Californians are suffering the economic damage of high utility bills and high housing costs for no reason. As The Two Hundred for Homeownership notes in its lawsuit against the electric car mandate, “Greenhouse gas emissions within California (as measured by CARB) represent less than 1% of global anthropogenic emissions. These emissions can be completely eliminated (‘carbon neutrality’) and the consequences of global climate change will remain unchanged.”
California’s climate goals do nothing except increase poverty rates and worsen the quality of life for all residents of the state.
We can stop whenever we want. Next time you pay your electric bill, call your state representative and tell him that.
Email [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley
