There's a local public interest morning radio show on WJCT called First Coast Connect. If you're interested or curious about what's going on in northeast Florida, you should listen to the podcast or tune in if you're local.

Every Friday they have the Friday Media Roundtable in which local reporters and public figures discuss the week's events and place them in context for the city and the region.

I love the show and I donate $25 a month as a "sustaining member," which makes my local public radio station one of my more expensive subscription streaming services. The good news is you can pay what you want. So if you can't afford $25 a month, you can pay $5, or just donate $20 for the year! Or if you can't afford it at all, you're still welcome to listen and be informed.

But, I digress.

In this morning's broadcast, the last issue that came up was a proposed rate increase for the publicly owned utility, JEA. The .9% rate hike is intended to offset the increased costs of buying power from Georgia Power's Plant Vogtle nuclear power plant.

Now, this rate increase will be unpopular, and Vogtle has been a sad story of cost overrun after cost overrun and likely put Toshiba out of business. But that's not the real story.

The real story is the other rate increase JEA recently enacted, where it increased the base rate, which places a higher burden on low-income customers, while it also offered a rate structure that reduced costs for higher energy consumers.

That should never have happened.

Base rates should have remained the same, while surcharge rates should have applied to high consumption customers to encourage efforts at conservation and efficiency. Instead, they offered a market signal that suggests that energy costs are low.

And they are low, because they don't capture the externalities in the degradation of our climate and the costs of adapting to our changing climate. If indeed that's possible.

I wasn't able to call in in time to rant about this, because it just infuriates me.

Especially because DeSantis, in a politically calculated move to promote his presidential campaign, rejected over $300M in federal funds to help consumers to improve the energy efficiency of their homes and reduce the amount of carbon their energy use injects into our atmosphere.

It's criminal. Or it ought to be. Just like when he politicized public health, exhibiting depraved indifference to the health and safety of Floridians during the height of the pandemic.

I didn't get to call in, but I do have the marmot. I expect that First Coast Connect has a vastly larger audience than the marmot, but at least I get to have my say.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:54 Friday, 29 September 2023