John Oliver explains electric utilities, why they're charging you so much, and why they hate solar
Somebody must have hired John Oliver on the sly for us. Over the last 2 months, he has done 3 different shows in his series called "Last Week" that are straight out of Community Power's community education playbook, and delivered with humor.
Energy utilities behave in an odd manner because they are incentivized to build as much infrastructure as they possibly can by passing the costs onto you on your electric bill... and all with a profit guaranteed by the state of around 10%. This system of monopoly utilities profiting from increased spending on projects whether or not customers need them might have served a purpose in the early 1900's. But has it led to massive injustices outrages nowadays with Oliver providing the following examples:
- South Carolina Electric & Gas - Customers are forced to pay for projects that never create any power so that utility executives can collect their bonuses.
- Duke Energy- Stifles innovation & competition that would be a net benefit to society like distributed solar.
- PG&E- Refusing to spend money on maintaining equipment that failed and is responsible for numerous California wildfires... all because utility profits are pegged to money that they spend on new infrastructure that they build, not on maintaining it.
- Mississippi Power- Ripped off customers with several billion $ of cost overruns, enabled by complicit state regulators rushing to approve projects without due diligence
- First Energy- A huge scandal of buying off energy decision makers in Ohio (covered in previous newsletters)
John Oliver also did similar episodes on the power grid and environmental racism
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