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CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – My first electric bill of winter arrived last week. It was up. $60 more than December a year ago.
Some of that was from our early-winter cold snap. My furnace was running more as temperatures hovered around 0 for about a week.
A report by WisPolitics tells the other part of the story. Governor Evers appointees to the Public Service Commission approve almost every rate increase that’s submitted to them. 71-percent of utility rate increases were rubber-stamped “yes” – that’s $2.2-billion in rate hikes since Evers took control of the PSC.
A lot of this is driven by green energy, which is the most expensive and least efficient type of energy in our power mix. That can be laid at the feet of Governor Jim Doyle, who signed off on unrealistic clean energy requirements for our state. So now coal-fired boilers are turned off, and any open space available gets turned into a solar farm or windmills. You and I – the ratepayers – foot the bill for it. And solar costs don’t even include the sky-high costs of dismantling old solar panels, which are good for about 20-years and are nearly impossible to recycle… or the expenses of building windmills, which are expensive to maintain and one-third of which are out of service at any given time.
Last winter, when winter heating costs were also high, California governor Gavin Newsom suggested that the right indoor temperature during the cold time of year was a chilly 67 degrees. Of course that’s the recommendation for working people like you and me. Somehow I suspect when Gavin is chilly in the governor’s mansion, he doesn’t reach for a sweater. He sets the thermostat to whatever makes him comfortable.
Chris Conley
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