If the Illinois Commerce Commission keeps sticking up for ratepayers and Illinois’ climate goals, everyone will benefit.
Thursday, the commission told ComEd it needs a better plan for ensuring its electric grid improvements are cost-effective. The commission also pared back the utility’s request for a boost in its profit rates. That will save consumers money in the coming year.
The commission has done good work here. Ratepayers have lived through a decade of higher rates for electricity and natural gas, and they can’t afford another decade of higher rates triggered by an accelerated rate increase. Too many customers can’t afford the utility bills they get now.
ComEd needs to upgrade its electric grid to meet the goals set in Illinois’ 2021 Climate Equitable and Jobs Act. CEJA, among other things, calls for 1 million electric vehicles on the roads by 2030 and boosting renewable energy. It also needs to prepare for more severe weather caused by climate change.
But the ICC ordered ComEd and Ameren Illinois, which serves downstate Illinois, to come back with new plans that achieve those goals in a more cost-effective manner, as laid out in CEJA. It also reduced their rate hike requests by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Utilities should not stick customers with unreasonable bills even as the utilities ring up big profits. That could undermine CEJA, which was designed to move the state toward renewable energy without walloping ratepayers in their wallets.
Last month, the ICC sent a similar message to Peoples Gas and other Illinois gas utilities by substantially trimming their requested significant rate increases. In a filing on Thursday, Peoples indicated it expects to submit an entirely new rate hike request. Should that rate hike request materialize, it, too, will need thorough scrutiny.
The ICC should continue to insist the days of utilities feasting on virtually unchecked rate increases and higher built-in profits have come to an end.
That would be good news for the ratepayers who have been picking up too much of the tab.
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