Marketplace: “Climate Change is Leading to Higher Utility Bills—and Not Just Because of Rising Temps”
Barbara Kates-Garnick, a member of Resources for the Future’s Board of Directors, is quoted in a piece on Marketplace.
You may have noticed that your electric bill is higher these days than it used to be. Maybe a lot higher. Many utilities around the country have asked for permission to raise rates in the last few years—and gotten it.
State regulators approved nearly $10 billion in net rate increases last year, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. That’s more than twice what they approved in 2022. And one big reason for all the increases? Climate change.
We all want reliable electricity, and utilities are charged with supplying it.
But “when we have wildfires, and when we have other natural disasters, the utility reliability suffers,” said Barbara Kates-Garnick, professor of practice at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
As climate change makes disasters more common, she said that utilities are working to make the grid more resilient. “They are saying, ‘I bury the line underground, I’ll insulate it, I’ll make it impervious to the wildfire or the flood.’ Well, that’s expensive.”
