Washington, DC — Today, the Consumer Price Index report shows that electricity prices increased by 4.8% on an annualized basis, compared to 2.4% for the overall CPI, continuing the trend of electricity price inflation outpacing broader consumer price putting further cost pressure on households, farmers and small businesses.  

With Gulf tensions raising gasoline prices, federal action on electricity is the most immediate path to protecting American wallets from energy shock-driven inflation. Enforcing FERC Order 1000 offers a quick common-sense solution to lowering transmission costs through federal action. 

In a statement, Paul Cicio, Chair of the Electricity Transmission Competition Coalition stated, “Responsibility for rising electricity transmission costs rests with FERC. The Commission has the tools to address this issue but is failing to do so. Edison Electric Institute forecasts that electric utilities plan to spend $137.7 billion from 2026 to 2028 on transmission. That is only the initial capital costs. When up to ten FERC transmission incentives are added and financing costs, the cost to ratepayers quadruples to $550.8 billion.” 

The Federal Power Act, is first and foremost a consumer protection act, yet FERC continues to protect monopoly utilities instead of protecting consumers. Transmission competition has been shown to reduce project costs by as much as 40 percent, yet less than 10 percent of all transmission projects require utilities to compete with other utilities to build new transmissions projects. There are numerous examples of competitively bid projects saving hundreds of millions of dollars for consumers and ratepayers. In a world that is unpredictable, consumers know that competition works.