Lowering Utility Bills
Keep rates affordable and money in our communities.
One of our main priorities is to keep utility rates low, ensuring that every household and business can enjoy reliable service without financial strain. Cutting out Pepco’s shareholders is a path to that reality.
In 2023 alone, Pepco took $306 million in operating profit from our community for their distant, corporate shareholders all while asking for a 20% rate increase. This needs to end.
Industry analysis shows that public power customers have the lowest bills and pay 9% less than customers of other utility types. Along with creating a publicly owned utility in DC, we are proposing real-time solutions to controlling and lowering rates today.
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Our path to public power in Washington, DC is through municipalization: the transfer of ownership from Pepco to our local government. This does away with the greed-based model and returns local control.
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For-profit utilities like Pepco are encouraged to overspend on infrastructure projects to justify their high rates and high returns on investment. A grid owned by the public gets rid of this price gouging incentive.
A DC-owned utility will invest in projects efficiently and sensibly because its goals are to serve its customers, not its shareholders.
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On average, public power utilities have lower rates and less frequent rate hikes than investor-owned utilities. With no shareholders to pay out, public utilities reinvest their profit and limit the need for rate increases. In fact, public power customers pay $100 - $320 less, on average, than for-profit utility customers.
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Without stock deals and “golden parachutes,” public power leaders are not paid million-dollar salaries seen at Pepco and Exelon. Instead, leaders are well-paid and given competitive benefits. This means ratepayers won’t be footing the bill for outrageous 8-digit CEO salary packages.