Recently, I’ve seen a lot of people in Western North Carolina raise concerns about rising utility bills. While some of this can be attributed to a cold winter, last year’s Senate Bill 266 and Duke Energy’s proposed carbon plan are about to cause even more pain for ratepayers.
Senate Bill 266 allows Duke to raise utility rates for “Construction Work in Progress (CWIP)” costs — meaning that they can charge ratepayers for plants that are in construction and may never even be finished. This happened recently with a nuclear plant in South Carolina. It also shifts certain costs from commercial and industrial customers onto residential customers.
Meanwhile, Duke’s new Carolina Resources Plan delays coal retirements and calls for a massive expansion of risky natural gas investments, which will expose ratepayers to volatile fossil fuel prices and increase bills even more…