The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
If you use a lot, you could pay a lot more
A bill out of the Colorado state senate this week could result in your electric bill going down. State senators Kathleen Curry and Gail Schwartz co-sponsored the bill which would call for a so-called “inclining block rate”, where the price of electricity rises with increasing usage. Consumers would essentially pay a premium for higher electricity usage. Implementation of the rate structure would be up to each local Rural Electric Association.
According to studies by The Brattle Group, a global economics consulting firm, tiered pricing will likely result in electricity prices dropping from 1 to 4 percent and customer bills dropping 1 to 5 percent.
High Country Citizens’ Alliance Climate and Clean Energy Coordinator Chris Menges says that if the bill is approved and implemented by the local electricity cooperative, Gunnison County Electric Association it won’t raise residential rates for average users and won’t impact non-residential users like Crested Butte Mountain Resort or the college.
“This is something water utilities commonly do and have done for years,” said Menges. “The goal is to primarily discourage over-watering of landscaping.”
Gunnison County Electric Association and Colorado Rural Electric Association (CREA) board member Chris Morgan agrees. “The bill only addresses residential services, and therefore its scope of influence is only on residential services that are in a co-op service territory. It does not address any commercial services. As a result, CBMR does not come under the provisions of this bill. Western State College is served by the City of Gunnison, a municipal utility, and it is not affected by this bill, because the bill only addresses electric cooperatives,” he said.
“GCEA has not yet discussed the inverted block rates,” Morgan says. “But the CREA is in active support of this bill. The bill provides that a cooperative electric association may charge different rates for increased electric usage.”
Morgan says the bill is revenue neutral but it would impact those residences that utilize a lot of electricity. “As the bill stands today, it would be revenue neutral and would not produce a separate funding source for efficiency or renewable energy,“ he says. “It would, however, promote a rate design that would favor those who used less electricity and penalize those who used more electricity.”
The bill now goes to the state house of representatives for consideration. If passed, each regional electric co-op could then choose whether or not to implement an inverted rate design structure.
