State Senator Joseph J. Crisco, Jr. (D‑Woodbridge) this evening offered the following testimony in OPPOSITION to the electric rate hike proposed by the United Illuminating Company, which serves a third of a million residential, commercial and industrial customers in the greater New Haven and Bridgeport areas.
The public hearing was held Monday, Sept. 12, at 6:30 p.m., in the Kennedy Mitchell Hall of Records, Hearing Room G2, 200 Orange St., in New Haven.
My name is Joseph Crisco, and I am the Connecticut State Senator representing the 17th State Senate District towns of Ansonia, Beacon Falls, Bethany, Derby, Hamden, Naugatuck and Woodbridge.
I come before you this evening to share my concerns about the proposed rate hike by the United Illuminating Company. This rate hike hits close to home, to many people’s homes, and will directly affect our efforts to control the cost of energy consumption.
It is conventional wisdom that we all benefit when we’re more efficient with our energy usage. Or, do we? Who really benefits?
Let me start by saying how much I appreciate that UI employs almost 1,000 people in our state. I value our large state employers, particularly when their management decisions are implemented fairly and reasonably. As a company, UI’s success has an immediate economic impact on thousands of workers. As an energy supplier, the impact on their customers is felt even more broadly. So any rate hike must be carefully considered, and I am grateful to PURA for convening these hearings to do that.
Like the proposed insurance rate hikes that I recently testified against, electric and water and other such utilities are necessities of life; therefore, the burden of proof for raising any utility rate is very high. Increases should only be made when consumers stand to benefit— and not simply be a means to boost the salaries of well-paid executives.
According to the Connecticut Office of Consumer Counsel, UI’s current residential distribution rate averages 8.75 cents per kilowatt hour. Compare that to Eversource’s rate of 6.02 cents per kilowatt hour — a 45 percent difference! That discrepancy alone should give regulators pause. Personally, I have three other concerns that give me pause.
First — The proposed increase would mean that an average UI customer using 700 kilowatts a month would see their bill increase by about $9.40 per month next year, by another $9.50 per month in 2018 ($19 a month over two years), and by $11 a month in 2019 (a total $30 a month increase in the next three years). This could prove incredibly costly and out of reach for many, particularly the neediest and most vulnerable residents who subsist on a fixed income.
Second — I find this rate hike incredibly audacious in the face of UI’s recent megamerger with Iberdola, which is Spain’s leading electricity and natural gas utility who purchased UI’s parent company for close to $3 billion last year. What happened to the cost savings that were supposed to be felt as a result of that merger? This rate hike is a blatant example of a megamerger that is not only NOT saving customer’s money; but rather COSTING them more, as evidenced by this proposed rate hike.
UI says this $141 million rate hike will be put toward “modernization” and “infrastructure improvements,” which leads me to my third concern: namely, who really does benefit from a rate hike?
Energize Connecticut is a very successful initiative across our state, helping consumers save money and use clean energy. Their work is partly funded by a charge on customer energy bills. United Illuminating is an active partner in this effort, to which I give them credit. Nearly a million Connecticut residents, businesses and municipalities have taken advantage of Energize Connecticut’s home and business energy-efficiency solutions since 2015. As a result, these consumers will collectively save nearly $1 billion in lifetime energy costs, according to a report by the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Board (EEB).
So, we know that electricity savings are happening all across Connecticut. But are these savings really being passed on to the consumer?
There is a serious disconnect when UI says they are saving money through efficiencies, but needs to increase customer rates to do it! So who is benefitting from being efficient? It’s certainly not the customer if the answer to energy efficiency is a rate increase! That actually means customers are being penalized for doing the right thing.
Our State Attorney General George Jepsen has been quoted as condemning this proposed UI rate increase, and I come here today to echo that sentiment. Connecticut and its electricity consumers cannot afford another rate increase of any kind.
I reject this proposed rate hike, and I encourage PURA to do the same.
