The Impact the CLCPA Has Had to Date…

July 25th, 2023

Last week it was revealed that the Public Service Commission has approved to date $43.7 billion in costs related to the CLCPA that ratepayers will shoulder. This does not include another $5 billion approved at yesterday’s meeting – which would bring the total to $48.7 billion.

What is astonishing is that while only $2 billion of $48.7 billion has been passed onto residential and business customers in 2022 (pages 24 and 25*), they have already resulted in double digit increases for many upstate businesses in 2022 alone and nearly 10 percent increases for many Upstate residential customers (page 27 **).

At least one commissioner noted that they would like to know better how these costs are going to impact industrial customers down the road. While the report does not lay out how the growing costs are likely to impact ratepayers in the years to come, what we can see is that recovering just $2 billion of it has already led to significant rate increases.  However, it can be reasonably anticipated that as the utilities recover the outlays to comply with the CLCPA, many residential and business customers will face double digit increases well into the foreseeable future.