Utilities companies like ComEd and Peoples Gas make money by delivering energy. The rates they’re seeking to hike are for distribution, including infrastructure like pipes and transmission lines, and the profit they can tack on to those costs.
Illinois utilities companies want to charge more for delivering natural gas and electricity to consumers across the state.
The increases do not include the actual price of electricity or gas, the costs of which are passed on directly to consumers at-cost. “I would note that’s on top of three rate hikes in just four years, recently increasing rates by 77%,” Scarr said. “That actually would be the biggest rate increase in history. It was when they made it. But it was one-upped by Peoples Gas just days later.”
In other words, Peoples Gas argues that because the price of natural gas is expected to decline, the increase the company seeks for delivering natural gas means the total cost could work out to a wash.“This past year we saw significant increases in the cost both of electricity and of gas,” Scarr said. “And so consumers have felt that in the bills they’re paying. Those may go down in future years. They go up and down. These are global commodities, and there’s a lot that influences their price.
He called it a “headscratcher” that ComEd is in a position to raise rates higher than before, and in so doing make a bigger profit than before, including under the formula rate law that diminished ICC oversight and that is at the heart of the upcoming trials.
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