Californians might soon get electric bills based on how much they make: The higher their income, the more they’ll owe each month.
It’s part of a plan to pay for modernizing California’s creaky electricity system, whose downed power lines have been blamed for starting massive forest fires — and where an increasingly hotter and drier climate is pushing demand for energy ever higher.
The new state law aims to make higher-income people shoulder a greater burden when it comes to paying for the power system’s modernization, The Washington Post reports.
It doesn’t totally take out of the equation how much power each household uses: Part of each bill will still be based on that. But each bill also will have “fixed charges” that will be set based on income.
Households with incomes under $28,000 would pay $15 a month in the Los Angeles area, for instance, according to a proposal made to the California Public Utilities Commission, which the Post cited. But households with incomes over $180,000 would pay $92 a month — a 144% difference. In San Diego, they’d pay $128 a month.
www.businessinsider.com/california-electric-bills-based-on-income-protests-environment-ev-2023-6?amp
h/t galen2922