Fort Collins Sustainability Group

Originally appeared in the Fort Collins Coloradoan on December 5, 2011

The tiered residential electric rate ordinance recently given initial approval by the Fort Collins City Council will keep annual bill increases below wholesale cost inflation for most customers. It will do this while encouraging conservation and discouraging excessive energy use. Unfortunately, the Coloradoan’s coverage of this story (11/22/11) focused on summer bills of customers using significantly more energy than average to suggest that huge increases are in store for many area residents.

In fact, the annual electric bills of 88% of residential customers will go up by less than 6% next year, which is approximately equal to the wholesale cost increase that will be imposed by the Platte River Power Authority. Only the uppermost 12% of residential customers will see their annual bills go up more than that. Those increases will range from 6% up to 20% for the very highest users.

Public policy should encourage those using significantly more electric energy than average to use less through an appropriate rate structure. Fossil fuel generated electricity imposes serious health and environmental costs through the emission of pollutants, including particulate matter, nitric oxides, and carbon dioxide. These result in various cardio-pulmonary disorders (including excess deaths), acid rain, and global climate change, respectively. Tiered rates will help reduce these impacts.

The Fort Collins Sustainability Group supports the tiered residential electric rate ordinance. For more information on our position, visit www.cjpe.org/fcsg. We encourage your readers to contact council members before December 6th to ask them to give final approval to this rate change.

Kevin Cross,
Fort Collins Sustainability Group