WASHINGTON – Today’s inflation data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the monthly increase for electricity in December was 1.3% as compared to just .3% for the CPI and -.1% for the CPI/energy commodities. Across all of 2023, the electricity price index increased 3.3% as compared to -2.0% for the energy commodities basket. Additionally, the full year inflation data showed that electricity prices exceeded other energy commodities such as fuel oil and gasoline. FERC can take action to fight these runaway prices, but it is currently poised to back incumbent monopoly utilities and entrench electricity inflation.

In a statement, Paul Cicio, Chair of the Electricity Transmission Competition Coalition, said: “Without competition, monopoly incumbent electric utilities do not have an incentive to reduce costs when building new transmission projects. They receive a ROE on every dollar spent for periods of 40 years or more. And all the costs are paid for by us, the consumer. Because FERC is not enforcing competition, less than 10 percent of all transmission projects are competitively bid. Electricity price inflation is solely caused by non-competitive escalating transmission costs that are rolled into our utility bills.” 

Competitively bid electricity transmission projects have been shown to reduce costs to consumers by up to 40 percent according to The Brattle Group – assuming a conservative estimate, if only 33% of new transmission projects were competitively bid and there is an average cost savings of 40%, ratepayers could save an estimated $277 billion. If all new transmission projects were competitively bid at an average cost savings of 40%, ratepayers could save an estimated $840 billion by 2050. Read more about the benefits of transmission competition in ETCC’s comprehensive report.