I'm not an expert by any means so please don't think that I'm implying that I am.
But, I am a Union Boilermaker. We build and repair power plants. In Indiana we use Coal Burners for the most part. Our president in his infinate wisdome has decided to tax the coal-burning powerplants out of existance. Then the EPA has given themselves authority that they have never had in the past that puts even more regulations on what the Energy Companies are allowed to do. So, with the combination of these two and I'm sure many more influences in this process, cost are going up for the Power Plants. They are not going to eat those cost, we are !!! We as recent as this past October had a job cancled in Indiana because the EPA would not let the Power Plant make needed upgrades and repairs. The job had been scheduled for months. This involves EPA permits and involvement at many levels. With over a month of pre-outage work already done and several hundred union workers on-site going thru Safety Orientation preparing to start the outage work, the EPA in their infanite wisdome and newly gained, self-implied power came in and stopped the work. Now, prior to this job being started their was pre-outage work form the engineers, several labour unions, plus all of the needed materials bought and paid for. I'm guessing MILLIONS of dollars spent with no exaduration what-so-ever. Do you think the Energy Company is going to eat that cost that the EPA had already sighed off on, then steps in with new authority at the latest possaible minute and kills the job ??? Now another thing that is causing rates to rise is the fact that "some" companies had been working with a set-rate that they were allowed to charge customers for the amount of energy that they used. This was a limitation that they agreed to with the governing states that they operated in. It was a contract. Well that contract time has lappsed. They had to show that the prior rate was not making them a profit and they were allowed to increase what they were charging to remain in business. So as you can see with just my limited knowledge on the Energy Industry there are several reasons for rate increase's.
It's not ALL the fault of the Energy Company. But their profits should be held in check, as well as Oil & Gas refinery's !!! They have to make a profit to continue to run the business and explore better ways to do so but put a cap on it somewhere. I don't mind paying my "fair share", as long as it's fair !!!
and you thought you could rant ...... hahaha