Crux of Energy

Ahhhh, the time has come to reconcile my personal budget... again. Most of the February bills have come and gone, with the exception of one very important bill -- the energy bill. Being from Texas, I usually don't have to be sitting down with cocktail in hand before I open the electric bill at this time of year. Those hot days of summer are looming ahead!

In a cost-cutting measure at the end of last year, I switched electric providers to a more "environmentally-friendly" Green Mountain Energy. I was paying a whopping 20.3 cents per kilowatt hour with my previous provider. I signed a 3-month deal for a more reasonable 13.4 cents with Green Mountain. Why I was going so long paying a very high rate is quite simple. Like a lot of busy Americans, I got hooked on automatic-payments for damned near everything -- and that served as my lull into a false sense of security. I simply stopped checking my statements every month like a good little Samaritan.

Now that my 3-month contract is up, I received an offer to lock in rates for the next 12 months. I checked their rate tables, and something caught my eye that just pisses me off about energy company practices. As I scanned the table, I noticed that the more energy you gobble up, the cheaper the rate.

The crux of this scenario should be apparent to those who are conscientious about our skyrocketing energy usage and the subsequent environmental impacts. To the Mr. Electric Company, that's a very sound business practice -- encourage people to use more, keep demand up, and keep money flowing into their pockets.

For states who experience brownouts or rolling blackouts on an annual basis due to wasteful energy usage and system overloads, they might want to review this type of business practice... especially in states like California. Perhaps legislature could make a progressive sales tax percentage specific to this industry... say 4% on bills with usage under 700 kilowatt-hours a month... and 11% for those over 700 kilowatt-hours, as a rough example.

Luckily, Texas is the only state in the continental United States that is on its own power grid. I have yet to personally experience this type of situation that Californians are subjected to; but it sucks being "penalized" for not using enough energy.