AUTHORS: Elizabeth Yeampierre, Justin Wood and Daniel Chu
”Most of our neighbors have received painfully high electricity bills this winter from ConEd. For the millions of New Yorkers facing steep rent increases and rising prices for food and other necessities, this is an especially hard blow, and is likely to get worse this month.
The reason bills have shot up is because during peak demand hours, electricity prices have almost tripled. As ConEd explains, the problem is the rapidly rising cost of acquiring energy on the wholesale market that the utility then passes on to customers. Natural gas prices have indeed been spiking worldwide, driven partly by heating demand during the coldest winter months. Prices for both oil and natural gas are now being further exacerbated as energy markets react to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But there’s much more to this story in New York City that the big energy corporations and their backers in Congress aren’t telling us. Our electric grid is especially vulnerable to price shocks because 70 percent of our electricity is generated by power plants that burn fossil fuels—a sharp contrast to nearby regions that use more renewables like wind, solar and hydroelectric power. These fossil fuel plants are particularly susceptible to demand-driven price spikes, and even worse, the emissions released by these gas-burning power plants are particularly unhealthy for nearby residents, often people of color and low-income communities.”
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