Next month, Dominion Energy Virginia customers will begin paying Virginia’s first direct carbon tax on their bills. The amount they pay to buy carbon dioxide allowances from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative will not be listed on the bill separately but will produce a noticeable bump in price.
Not long after, another energy-related tax will be added to customer bills for both Dominion and Appalachian Power Company customers. This one, tiny at first but destined to grow, will create a fund to subsidize the electric bills of low income customers. If high use produces a big bill, above a level tied to their income, they will owe only part of it and the fund covers the rest.
Meaning you will help pay their bill. You will never see the words “Percentage of Income Payment Program” on the billing sheet, but you will start paying it soon. Legislation in 2021 capped the program at $125 million per year but that can and will be changed.
Both of these bill additions, each a tax per kilowatt hour, flow from recent State Corporation Commission decisions. Don’t blame the SCC. The General Assembly created both, just the leading edge of the wave of rising energy costs coming to Virginia.
Many but not all flow from the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act, a state level “green new deal” intended to end all use of coal or natural gas for making electricity by 2050. Other new laws are setting similarly aggressive goals for eliminating motor fuels and reducing fossil fuel use in home appliances and even agriculture.
Democrats openly promised to do all this if voters put them in charge. It is safe to assume more will be done in this direction if they stay in charge after November’s elections.
The SCC has issued warnings of 50 to 60 percent price increases in a relatively short period.
To read the rest of this Article, click new electricity tax is leading edge of rising energy costs
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