Food and Water Watch Senior Organizer Brooke Ward and Isabella Moeller, a USF student working with the Hillsborough Affordable Energy Coalition, joined MidPoint to explain the shocking rate increases we will find in our electric bills after January 1st, and the further increases we will face in March 2025.
Your Utilities Bill Just Got Hiked
On December 3d, 2024, the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC)– a political body consisting of officials appointed by Governor DeSantis that apparently provides little service to the interests of the public–voted to deny their own staff’s recommendations that would have slashed the Tampa Electric Company’s (TECO) rate hike request in half and would have saved TECO’s residential customers millions of dollars over the next three years. Residents and small businesses will now be footing the bill for $71 million in rate increases to save large industrial and commercial customers money the company will pass on to their shareholders. The PSC’s denial came despite sustained public opposition to the rate hikes from Hillsborough County customers. Now, perhaps emboldened by the Public Service Commission’s capitulation to TECO’s rate increase request, Florida Power and Light customers will face the largest rate increase request ever made by a power utility in the United States pending before the PSC.
It Gets Worse
The PSC also rejected their staff’s recommendation to deny TECO’s request to build a new fracked gas plant at MacDill Air Force base and approved passing on the $167 million cost of the plant to customers in increased electricity rates. They also approved a plan that will require Hillsborough consumers to now also face additional expenses of $30 to $50 on average per month for 12 months beginning in March 2025 to replenish TECO’s reserves that were spent on hurricane recovery expenses this year.
Our guests, Brooke Ward, Senior Florida Organizer, Food & Water Watch, and Isabella Moeller, together with their allies, have been mobilizing citizen opposition to “these greedy fossil-fueled rate hikes,” according to Ms. Ward. They were instrumental in winning Tampa Bay’s first in-district PSC TECO rate hike hearing in 15 years so that impacted community members could be heard. Despite this opposition and the recommendations of PSC staff, “the PSC continues to be a rubber stamp for utilities and big business over struggling communities.”
What Now?
Because irony is dead in Florida and hypocrisy rules, Tampa Electric is raising its customers’ utility bills to move their headquarters from downtown Tampa to higher ground in Midtown, claiming it’s to protect against flooding and meet hurricane resiliency standards. But here’s the real issue: while TECO is protecting its headquarters from extreme weather, it continues to invest in dirty fossil fuels that are fueling the climate crisis, which is causing more frequent storms and flooding. Eighty-nine percent of TECO’s energy customers are in Hillsborough County. The Affordable Energy Coalition suggests that the Hillsborough County Commission can mitigate the PSC’s rate hike actions by passing an Affordable Energy and Climate Plan to keep energy bills lower by moving away from fossil fuels.
Listen to the full January 8, 2025 show on demand here, on the WMNF app, or as a WMNF MidPoint podcast.
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