Making Cents Out of Watts: What’s Driving Up Your Energy Bills?
March 14, 2025
Climate One Podcast (opens in a new tab)
Severin Borenstein, Faculty Director of the Energy Institute, joins the Climate One Podcast to analyze how lower-income households spend a greater share of their income on energy compared to higher-income households.
“First of all, there’s the cost of the actual electricity generation and delivery. Second, there’s the fixed cost of the infrastructure to do that delivery, the transmission and distribution. Third, there’s the things we are having to do to respond to climate change. Clearing the brush around those poles and wires, and upgrading the transformers and doing a number of things to deal with what climate change is doing to us, particularly with increased wildfire risk. And fourth, there’s the things California is trying to do to mitigate climate change to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions…Well, we are trying to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, but first of all, it’s not that expensive for the most part. And secondly, that’s not most of what’s driving up our rates these days. Most of it is what climate change is doing to the state and we are choosing to pay for that through rates rather than through the state budget…If you look at the increase, even on a state wide-basis, since 2019 its up about 60%. Whereas the consumer price index, the measure of inflation, is up about 3%. So it’s drastically higher. But that doesn’t even tell the whole story because that averages in some municipal utilities who have made much smaller increases.”
Photo: climateone.org