FirstEnergy is proposing to refund $13.6 million to Pennsylvania customers who the company mischarged for payments related to the utility’s bribery schemes in Ohio, as well as advertising, lobbying, sports sponsorships and other expenses that are supposed to be excluded from the rates of publicly regulated utilities.  The utility is proposing the refund as part of a newly filed rate case in which FirstEnergy is also seeking to increase the rates paid by its Pennsylvania customers by $502 million, or nearly thirty-seven times the proposed refund. Most residential ratepayers would receive a ..read more

Over 2,000 people submitted comments to the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) throughout Arizona Public Services’ (APS) rate case application, with many expressing frustration and anger with the utility’s proposed $460 million rate hike. But at least 16 groups that hold ties to APS, the state’s largest investor-owned electric utility — including charitable contributions from the utility, board positions, and memberships — submitted comments in support of the rate hike, according to an EPI review of the comments.  Hundreds of Arizonans asked the ACC to deny the rate hike. The ACC had al ..read more

The State Policy Network (SPN) announced on its website last month that it will focus on working with state lawmakers to prevent states from adopting wind and solar power in 2024.  SPN is the national organization that serves as the central hub of a network of affiliated think tanks located in all 50 states, and is funded by right-wing and corporate donors that include fossil fuel interests. The network also includes associate groups like the Donald Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute and multiple organizations backed by Charles Koch, such as Americans for Prosperity.  Koch ..read more

Decarbonizing the economy will require a significant expansion of interstate and interregional transmission, but investor-owned utilities in the South, such as Southern Company and Entergy, have spent years undermining efforts to expand high-voltage transmission in an effort to entrench their monopolies, preserve the value of their existing fossil fuel assets, and limit the introduction of lower-cost renewable energy from outside their service territories.  Expanded high-voltage transmission is crucial to increasing the flexibility and reliability of the grid by expanding the geographic f ..read more

Shortly before requesting a substantial rate increase in August of 2022, the CEO of Avangrid, which owns gas and electric utilities in Connecticut, tried to improperly influence the state’s top utility regulator, documents reviewed by the Energy and Policy Institute allege. Pedro Azagra Blazquez, the CEO of Avangrid, made “thinly veiled” threats that unfavorable decisions by Connecticut’s Public Utility Regulatory Authority (PURA), under its Chair Marissa Gillett, would lead the company to reduce investment in the state, according to a letter memorializing the meeting written by PURA’s General ..read more

UPDATE, 3 pm EST Jan 23, 2024: The Virginia House Labor and Commerce Committee announced Tuesday morning that Sam Towell and Kelsey Bagot are likely to fill the SCC Judge vacancies, if confirmed by the General Assembly.  Towell served as Virginia’s deputy general attorney for civil litigation, which includes the office’s consumer counsel, for almost five years, before joining Smithfield Foods as their associate general counsel. Towell represented consumer interests as deputy general attorney, advocating for rate cuts and refunds on behalf of Virginia’s electricity ratepayers. The Virginia ..read more

A Virginia lawmaker introduced a bill last week that, if passed, would prohibit the utilities Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power from charging customers for many of their political activities.  The bill, HB 792, would bar Virginia’s investor-owned electric utilities from charging their customers for their dues to trade associations, lobbying of government officials, advertising and other efforts to influence public opinion, charitable giving, and litigation to challenge regulations or laws. Of that list, current law in Virginia only bans utilities from recovering the costs of advertisi ..read more

Governor Joe Lombardo has eroded Nevada’s robust climate plan, one year into his first term. From appointing a fossil fuel executive to head the Office of Energy to pulling the state out of the U.S. Climate Alliance, Lombardo’s actions, along with documents obtained by the Energy and Policy Institute, show an altering of the state’s approach to the climate crisis – a clear departure from his predecessor’s climate conscious footsteps.  Lombardo appoints Southwest Gas’s Dwayne McClinton to Office of Energy After defeating Democratic incumbent Steve Sisolak, Lombardo announced Southwest Gas ..read more

Dominion Energy South Carolina CEO Keller Kissam recently told lawmakers that he would be “fine” if the company did not pursue data centers as potential customers. But elsewhere within the company, Dominion sees data centers as one the largest growth areas for the utility.   At an October 18 hearing with South Carolina lawmakers of the the Economic and Utility Modernization Ad Hoc Committee, Kissam said, “we’re no longer going to serve [a municipal customer] coming up” and that it would be “fine with me if we didn’t serve any of [data centers].” Kissam’s comments come as Dominion and othe ..read more

A federal grand jury has indicted former Public Utilities Commission of Ohio chairman Samuel Randazzo on bribery and fraud charges.  FirstEnergy is not named in the indictment, which was unsealed today, but the utility company previously admitted it paid Randazzo the $4.3 million bribe attributed to “Company A” in the charging document. Randazzo resigned from PUCO in 2020, after the FBI raided his home.  Prosecutors used pseudonyms to describe multiple individuals and entities who are left unnamed in the indictment, but who can be identified based on previous reporting and evidence m ..read more