By Brooke Ward, Food & Water Watch
Chances are, if you get power from the Florida grid, you pay a monthly bill to an investor-owned utility corporation. And chances are, your bills are going up.
Just four corporations currently provide electricity to more than 15 million Floridians. In the Tampa Bay area, the Tampa Electric Company (TECO) supplies nearly 800,000 people with power, and even as Floridians pay the fourth-highest bills in the nation, bills are set to rise again. TECO has filed for a rate increase that would, if approved, raise the average residential bill to at least $160.93 a month in January 2025 — that’s 62% (fully $61/month) more than six years ago.
Floridians’ high energy bills require local government action since state agencies have failed to protect households from these astronomical rates. While the state’s Public Service Commission (PSC) ultimately determines what companies like TECO charge, industry capture has turned the Commission into a rubber stamp on corporate requests for ever-higher bills. It now falls to local governments to represent their impacted constituents.
Seven Hillsborough County commissioners represent 672,297 TECO customers – 84% of the utility’s residential base. For over a year, concerned community members with the Hillsborough Affordable Energy Coalition, representing a collective 12,000 commission constituents, have been demanding county action on increasingly unaffordable energy bills and the climate crisis they drive. Now is the time for action.
Here’s how TECO wants to raise energy bills, and what the Hillsborough County Commission can do about it:
TECO is requesting up to a 12.6% increase for electricity generation. If approved, starting in January 2025, the average user would pay almost $20 more a month for the same amount of energy used today. That number creeps closer to $30 more a month by 2027. Part of this is profit-motivated — TECO is requesting the state issue an 11.5% return on equity to boost shareholder profits, financed by these rate hikes. That’s an increase from their current rate of 10.2% and it’s considerably higher than the average rate for the utility sector of 9.6%.
TECO is also requesting a 50.7% increase in base rates to finance infrastructure expansions that lock in the fossil fuels driving the climate crisis – and insulate TECO from that crisis. Even if you used no electricity at all, your bill would be paying for these costs, including half a billion dollars for TECO’s new headquarters, operation and data centers that are being moved — by their own admission — to avoid sea-level rise. Meanwhile, TECO plans only to grow its reliance on the fracked gas driving rising sea levels, even as it predicts gas prices will only rise.
The Hillsborough County Commission must intervene in TECO’s rate case to represent its customer constituents and press the case for affordable, clean energy.
The Hillsborough County Commission must also pass an affordable energy and climate plan to move off fossil fuels and keep rates low over the long term. This plan must boost energy efficiency programs, providing funding to homeowners, landlords and renters to install climate-friendly appliances that use less energy, while subsidizing cleaner buildings. An abundance of federal and state funding availability means many of these benefits would come at little to no cost. Tampa’s climate plan, announced last year, provides a model for Hillsborough County; the city’s plan to move off fossil fuels is expected to slash energy bills.
The county has taken initial steps in the right direction. At advocates’ request, Chair Hagan issued a letter from the full County Commission to the PSC last April, requesting in-district meetings for any future rate hikes. As a result, TECO announced plans for a local public hearing this June — a first in over 10 years. But there is so much more to do.
Local governments have the solutions at hand to address ever-higher energy bills and the climate crisis they fuel. It’s time for action. In Tampa Bay, the Hillsborough County Commission must lead the way by intervening in TECO rate hikes and passing an affordable energy and climate plan.
Brooke Ward is the Florida senior organizer with the national environmental advocacy group Food & Water Watch, mobilizing people to build solutions to pressing food, water and climate problems of our time. She can be reached at bward@fwwatch.org.
If you are interested in submitting an opinion piece to The Invading Sea, email Editor Nathan Crabbe at ncrabbe@fau.edu. Sign up for The Invading Sea newsletter by visiting here.
