Residential Electricity Prices in New Hampshire – Has Deregulation Delivered?

One of the first bits of energy news I looked at in the New Year was the updated information from the Energy Information Agency (EIA) on annual electricity prices across the US. This information takes a long time to collect and prepare, so it is only current to the end of 2018. Below, I have plotted the historical residential electricity prices for the US and New Hampshire.

There are a few important points to take from this chart.

• There was a run up in NH electricity prices in the early 1990s followed by a fall off around the start of the millennium, and since 2003 we have seen an almost consistent price increase year after year. Since 1990, retail prices for electricity in the US have increased by 60%, whereas those in NH have increased by 87%.
• In 2018, electricity prices in NH were 62% higher than the national average. This is the largest difference since the mid-1990s.

In NH, we (and I include myself) spend a lot of time wringing our hands and bemoaning our excessive electrical rates, which are the  6^th highest in the US: these grumbles are certainly supported by the data in the chart above.

As high as our electrical charges are, we need to appreciate that electrical rates are only one component of our electrical bills. The other important piece is how much electricity we use. I used the same data source and calculated the average monthly electricity consumption for each household in NH and the US for the same time period. The data are plotted below. I was impressed to note that the average NH electrical consumption has hovered around 600 kWh/month for the last 28 years, whereas the average consumption for the US has increased from 800 to 900 kWh/month.

Combining average monthly consumption and the retail electricity rates (via multiplication) yields the result that in 2018 the average NH electrical bill was $122/month vs. $118 for the US. That is a substantially smaller difference than I expected and has made me a little less fretful about electricity prices in NH. Yes, they are among the highest in the US, but our Yankee frugality combined with our lower dependence on electrical heating and air conditioning, as well as investments in energy efficiency, have led us to electrical bills that are very much on a par with the average for the US.

There is another way to analyze these numbers. I took the monthly bills, annualized them, and calculated them as a percent of the average annual household income, which I assembled from US Census data. For NH, the number in 2018 is 1.7%, which is down from 2.3% in 1990. The equivalent average numbers for the US have risen from 1.6% to 2.2% over the 1990–2018 time period. This indicates that, as a percent of household income, electrical bills in NH are lower than the US average.

All things considered, I think paying 1.7% of our income for reliable electricity supply that is there at a click of a switch is a small price to pay. However, this does not mean that we should not be concerned about electricity costs in NH. We should. My calculations use an average household income of $81,000 for NH. If you are earning substantially less than that amount, your costs for electricity can very quickly balloon to over 5% of your income and, if you are watching your pennies, every rate increase has a significant impact.

Whenever I look at historical electrical rates, I think about the impact of deregulation, which started in 1997 in NH and was only recently completed with the final sale of Eversource’s generating assets in 2018. As I have written in previous blog posts, deregulation required that electrical utilities get out of the electricity-generating business, but left them with the transmission and distribution monopolies in their service area. As a result, NH ratepayers now have the opportunity to purchase power from competitive suppliers or from their utilities who have to go into the open market to procure that electricity from independent generators.

The whole point of deregulation was to remove the monopoly of the utility and to bring competition into the electricity supply business and that prices would fall as a result. After 20+ years of deregulation, the results for NH have been a bit of a mixed bag. Yes, the large industrial and commercial enterprises in the state have benefited and, as individual rate payers, we now can choose who we buy electricity from, but, as the previous chart showed, it has certainly not brought down residential electricity prices.

In the Energy and Sustainability courses I teach at Franklin Pierce University, my students and I spend a fair amount of time debating the success of deregulation efforts in the US. There are now 17 states that have some form of electricity deregulation and it is hard to point at any fabulous success stories, whereas some stunning disasters, such as California’s attempts at deregulation and the subsequent bankruptcy of some of its largest utilities, have ensued.

I am always interested in good ideas and novel experiments: my view of deregulation is that it has been both of these. However, what is more important is looking back and understanding if these experiments and ideas have worked and, if they haven’t, perhaps we should consider trying something else.

With that said, I followed the approach of the folks from the American Public Power Association, who took a look at residential electrical rates from 1997, which is considered the first official year of electricity deregulation in the US . I looked at data for NH, and the US (this includes data from the chart above) as well as for the deregulated states (which include NH, MA, ME,  RI, CT, NY, NJ, DE, IL,CA, MI, OH, TX, DC, MT, MD). This is presented in the chart below, along with some data in the accompanying table.

We can observe that, in all cases, there have been overall price escalations, but for NH and the other deregulated states, the increases started from a higher base. The challenge with this data is how do we compare the relative increases – do we do this on the basis of the overall increase, the average annual increase, or the compounded annual growth rate, and, most importantly, what do we use as our time frame and starting date? In the table, I present data for the overall nominal and percent increases from a starting point to 2018. I chose three start dates for the comparisons: the first was 1997 – the date when deregulation became law in NH; the second was 2002, the year of the lowest NH electricity prices since deregulation; and 2012, which is when, based on the data, residential customer choice really kicked in at Eversource, the largest utility in NH.

In the first case, the data show that overall percent increases for electricity in NH and the deregulated states from 1997 were lower than those for the regulated states and the US overall because they started from a higher base. However if we use 2002 or 2012 as the base year, the increases for NH are substantially greater than for the US, the deregulated states, and the regulated states.

These analyses and comparisons are further complicated because deregulation only deals with the electricity-supply portion of the overall electricity price, which is about 60% of our overall electrical rates. There are a lot of factors baked into our electricity prices. There is the cost of electricity, which includes wholesale costs, long-term supply contracts, as well as the necessity to source renewable energy required by the renewable portfolio standard. And then there are transmission, distribution costs, systems benefit charges, service fees, and penalties for past mistakes and regulatory changes (in the form of stranded costs) and well as built-in profits for the utilities.

At this time, there is little evidence that residential rate payers in NH have benefited from deregulation. Although the large industrial and commercial users in the state have profited from the changes, I am hard pressed to make the case that deregulation has been good for residential rate payers. Yes, we can now choose to buy electricity from suppliers that source from renewable power generators (at a higher cost) and some might propose that deregulation had an impact by inhibiting larger prices increases. This is a weak argument to make because lower wholesale prices, driven by lower natural gas prices, have had a larger mitigating effect on price increases than deregulation.

Further evidence of the small impact that deregulation has had on residential rate payers in NH is the observation that only ~20% of NH residences have elected to go with a competitive provider. Moreover my recent review of electricity offerings from competitive suppliers shows that, in most cases, the default rates offered by the local utilities rates are, at this time, mostly lower than the competitive suppliers operating in the state. There are exceptions, but the differences are generally small and generally do not last over time. Not only are there concerns that deregulation has not benefited rate payers, but recent studies from other states have shown that residential rate payers have been penalized for participating in the competitive electricity supply market and that low-income customers suffer the bulk of the harm.

Deregulation seemed like a good idea at the time: we have tried it out but it has not worked out the way we thought it would. There have been benefits, but, in this case, competition and the “invisible hand” of the market have not led to lower residential rates. I think it is now time for us to take a long hard look at this experiment and to figure out if there is a better way. NH was the first state to the deregulation party and we should be the first to take a deep data-driven look at alternatives. I will be taking a closer look at this issue in future blogs. In the meantime, do your bit and turn off the lights when you leave the room.

Mike Mooiman
Franklin Pierce University
mooimanm@franklinpierce.edu
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PS: For those of you interested in looking at competitive electricity rates, the NH Public Utilities Commission now publishes information about the competitive suppliers and their rates on the PUC website at the following link. https://www.puc.nh.gov/ceps/shop.aspx

The Regional Greenhouse Initiative - Part 3

In Part 1 and Part 2 of my posts on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), I reviewed the money flows in the program and presented data on the remarkable decrease in carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions that we have seen since its implementation. In this post, I present some of the pros and cons of the RGGI program and some evidence that supports the assertion that RGGI has been responsible, in large part, for the decrease in regional CO₂ emissions.

Based on my research, the RGGI program seems to have some positive attributes, as well as some downsides. The advantages can be listed as follows:

• Since implementation of the program, CO₂ emissions have declined significantly. See figure below.
• The program puts a price on carbon in the electricity markets and provides incentives for us and the market to make economic choices regarding our electricity generation. Carbon pricing should lead the market to prefer lower carbon sources and thus provide economic support for low-emission sources, such as renewables.
• It is a market-based program, which provides generators with choices. They are required to participate but they can choose to purchase allowances or make investments in lower-carbon technologies to ensure that their carbon generation falls within their share of the particular cap specified at the time.
• The allowances generate a pool of money that is shared between participating states. This is returned to ratepayers in the form of direct rebates and used to fund energy-efficiency (EE) programs. The EE portion creates a virtuous cycle, in which carbon prices fund EE measures, which then lead to further reductions in energy use and carbon dioxide emissions.

One of the biggest criticisms leveled at the RGGI program is that the regional reductions in CO₂ emissions, noted in Part 2 of this series, are not attributable to more efficient plant operations induced by the RGGI program; rather, they are due to less in-state generation, conversion to natural gas which was already underway, and a slower post-recession economy.

A recent economic study examined this issue directly and reviewed reasons behind the decline in emissions. The authors of the study highlighted the following facts:

Carbon dioxide emissions from the RGGI states have declined, but the decrease is due to a number of factors, including:

1. The 2008/2009 Great Recession: with the economic slowdown, came reduced energy demand, less generation, and therefore fewer emissions;
2. Low natural gas prices, created by increased supply from the implementation of fracking technology: natural gas produces less CO₂ emissions per unit of generated electricity when compared with coal;
3. State programs promoting EE project implementation or renewable energy generation, such as renewable portfolio standards;
4. The RGGI program, which puts a price on carbon dioxide emissions.

The authors then carried out a complicated economic analysis to disentangle the effect of each factor on regional CO₂ emissions. What they concluded is the following:

• Without the impact of all the factors noted above, CO₂ emissions would have been 60% higher;
•  The bulk of decrease in emissions is, in fact, due to the RGGI program;
• Substitution by natural gas was an important factor, but less so than the RGGI impact;
• The impact of the recession on CO₂ emissions was minor;
• Some of the benefits of the RGGI program are undone by neighboring non-RGGI states that sell electricity into the regional power pools. Their coal-fired generation without the RGGI adder then becomes competitive and so more electricity is generated from their high-CO₂-emissions plants.

This provides good evidence to support the direct impact of the RGGI program, but is just a single economic study. I look forward to seeing others.

Other criticisms of the RGGI program include the following:

• It increases electricity costs to consumers in a region that already has high electricity rates.
• The implications of RGGI are only now starting to kick in. After recent implementation of the Adjusted Cap, CO₂ allowance prices have increased significantly and this could further impact electricity rates going forward.
• RGGI sets up unfair competition by neighboring states that don’t have these requirements. Their costs of generation do not include RGGI costs so their electricity is cheaper and they can sell into the RGGI markets with a built-in cost advantage.
• There are a lot of free riders – RGGI ratepayers lead by example by paying for reduced CO₂ emissions, but residents of non-RGGI states benefit from the cleaner air.
•  RGGI funds making their way to the states have been raided for other purposes, such as balancing state budgets, and are not always used to fund EE and renewable energy projects, which was the original intention of the program.
• Carbon pricing through the RGGI program is unfair to electricity ratepayers because other regional CO₂ emissions, such as those from transportation and heating, are not subject to carbon pricing.  

The argument that the RGGI program does increase the cost of electricity is valid, but it is important to put this into context. Let’s examine what the present carbon price means for individual ratepayers in terms of electricity rates. A review of RGGI state data from the Energy Information Agency (EIA) indicated the RGGI states, on average, emit 0.34 tons CO₂ per MWh of generated electricity. We can then calculate that a CO₂ price of $5/ton leads to an incremental cost of $1.70/MWh or 0.17 cent/kWh. If you use 600 kWh per month, this represents $1.02 in incremental costs on your bill. However, this calculation does not take into account that House Bill 1490 legislation mandated that only the first $1/ton CO₂ from the CO₂ emissions allowance auction proceeds could be used towards EE: anything beyond that has to be rebated directly to electricity ratepayers. As a result, most NH RGGI funds now go to direct bill rebates, so (assuming a $5/ton carbon price) ratepayers get about 80% of the RGGI costs back. If we back out the rebate, the cost to ratepayers is of the order of $0.20/month or 0.034 cents/kWh for 600 kWh/month electricity usage. This is in line with the rate impact calculations presented in the recent annual report on the RGGI program in NH. As you can see, there is an impact of RGGI on electricity rates, but the total amount paid by an individual ratepayer is tiny.

As I wrap up this three-part series on RGGI, it is clear that it is a complicated—but important—program. There is evidence that it appears to be having significant impact on regional carbon emissions, but, at the same time, it does impacts regional electricity prices; however, after including bill rebates, the utility bill impact to the average NH rate payer is tiny. A few years ago RGGI was viewed as a model program for the rest of the country and, if implementation of the EPA’s Clean Power Program had proceeded, participating states would have a considerable head start. Unfortunately, it looks like RGGI will remain a regional initiative only because there is no support from the Trump Administration for clean power or carbon pricing mechanisms. The most important development in the RGGI world is the review of the program that is currently underway, as this will set the tone for the RGGI program, carbon prices, and regional electricity rates going forward.

Until my next post, do your bit to reduce carbon emissions by remembering to turn off the lights when you leave the room.

Mike Mooiman

Franklin Pierce University

mooimanm@franklinpierce.edu

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