NewEnergyNews: ORIGINAL REPORTING: New Tools To Bring Equity To Electricity Service/

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YESTERDAY

THINGS-TO-THINK-ABOUT WEDNESDAY, August 23:

  • TTTA Wednesday-ORIGINAL REPORTING: The IRA And The New Energy Boom
  • TTTA Wednesday-ORIGINAL REPORTING: The IRA And the EV Revolution
  • THE DAY BEFORE

  • Weekend Video: Coming Ocean Current Collapse Could Up Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: Impacts Of The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current Collapse
  • Weekend Video: More Facts On The AMOC
  • THE DAY BEFORE THE DAY BEFORE

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 15-16:

  • Weekend Video: The Truth About China And The Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: Florida Insurance At The Climate Crisis Storm’s Eye
  • Weekend Video: The 9-1-1 On Rooftop Solar
  • THE DAY BEFORE THAT

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 8-9:

  • Weekend Video: Bill Nye Science Guy On The Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: The Changes Causing The Crisis
  • Weekend Video: A “Massive Global Solar Boom” Now
  • THE LAST DAY UP HERE

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 1-2:

  • The Global New Energy Boom Accelerates
  • Ukraine Faces The Climate Crisis While Fighting To Survive
  • Texas Heat And Politics Of Denial
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    Founding Editor Herman K. Trabish

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    WEEKEND VIDEOS, June 17-18

  • Fixing The Power System
  • The Energy Storage Solution
  • New Energy Equity With Community Solar
  • Weekend Video: The Way Wind Can Help Win Wars
  • Weekend Video: New Support For Hydropower
  • Some details about NewEnergyNews and the man behind the curtain: Herman K. Trabish, Agua Dulce, CA., Doctor with my hands, Writer with my head, Student of New Energy and Human Experience with my heart

    email: herman@NewEnergyNews.net

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  • WEEKEND VIDEOS, August 24-26:
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  • The Virtual Power Plant Boom, Part 1
  • The Virtual Power Plant Boom, Part 2

    Wednesday, August 17, 2022

    ORIGINAL REPORTING: New Tools To Bring Equity To Electricity Service

    Utility regulators eye new tools to ensure equity efforts don't impinge on other policy goals; It is up to regulators to solve the power sector’s cost of equity conundrum, equity advocates said.

    Herman K. Trabish, February 21, 2022 (Utility Dive)

    Editor’s note: Bringing the interests of all electricity users into decisions made in the regulatory process is becoming an essential element of the energy transition.

    Recent U.S. Department of Energy research verifies serious institution-based inequities in the power system’s delivery of electricity, but it can be rectified, utilities, regulators and equity advocates said. Lower-income households’ utility service disruptions are five times more frequent than higher-income households, and service losses by households of color are “far more likely” than for whites, according to a November 2021 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) paper. For both of those types of households, “disconnection notices signal an emergency,” the LBNL paper said.

    If inequities “baked into the existing system” are not reversed, they “are likely to become more pronounced” as the energy transition accelerates because equity is also equitable access to clean energy, energy efficiency and rate relief programs, consumer, utility, energy and environmental justice representatives wrote in the LBNL paper.

    Through fairly allocated costs and benefits, regulators “can absolutely address inequitable outcomes,” Commissioner Abigail Anthony of the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission told Utility Dive. But it is important to differentiate inequities in utility regulation “from inequities in other parts of the economy or society that are squeezed into utility bills and services.”

    Advancing equity requires new programs and rate designs that merge traditional cost of service regulation with public interest principles, power system stakeholders agreed. But those programs and rates must also protect against rising electricity costs that regulators, utilities and ratepayers in California and other states worry may slow the electrification needed for decarbonization and impede other ratepayer-funded policy goals, many said. Innovative Arrears Management Programs (AMPs) and Performance-Based Regulation (PBR) are potential win-win alternative paths to equity and other policy goals for utilities and ratepayers, the stakeholders said.

    “Energy equity is the fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of energy production and consumption,” according to LBNL Senior Program Manager Lisa Schwartz, the paper’s technical editor. It “can be a goal, tool or metric,” because equitable affordability is a goal, customer participation in regulatory debates is a tool, and metrics validate “policies, regulations and programs.”

    Recent policy initiatives by at least 13 states and the Biden administration are taking regulation beyond its traditional objectives of reliable, safe and affordable electric service to a new objective of serving the public interest, Schwartz added. That change in regulatory priorities can change access to electricity service, access to energy efficiency and clean energy programs and rate-setting… click here for more

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