Hatboro Borough manager Diane Hegele submitted the following press release to Glenside Local:
We’ve just dodged a bullet: PECO caved to considerable political pressure and withdrew its latest filing for yet another rate increase. That’s good, but rates are already too high.
We need reforms to bring them back down to an affordable level for everyone. Energy costs have skyrocketed in the last year, and are still climbing due to a number of factors:
· The need for transmission upgrades,
· Climate change is causing more extreme storms and damage to poles and wires, as well as
more frequent outages,
· Sharply rising demand from hyperscale data centers,
· Tariffs driving up costs of materials,
· Not to mention the War on Iran
· Failure of PJM to add new generation in a timely manner
So, we need a number of reforms as soon as possible to begin to solve this set of problems.
The Borough of Hatboro has been working on Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) for several years in order to bring cleaner, more affordable energy to all residents and small businesses in Hatboro Borough. We initially petitioned the Public Utility Commission for approval to implement a CCA program together with seven other boroughs across the state. The PUC felt they did not have the authority to approve our petition and that we needed legislation.
Community Choice Aggregation is a program, in which one or more local governments acquires electricity from a licensed supplier on behalf of residential and small commercial customers in that municipality. The local government sets the terms and conditions of the contract. Customers can opt-out at any time without penalty. CCA, already in place in eleven other states, has been able to provide savings of 10% on average. Pennsylvania can easily implement CCA. This is a policy whose time has come.
For more information please contact Tim Schultz, Mayor at 215-443-9100 or email at
tschultz@myhatboro.org.
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