Would You Pay $1/month For Your Neighbor’s Heat Pump?

Source: Politico  |  By Wes Venteicher

A proposal by Southern California Edison up for approval at this Thursday’s Public Utilities Commission meeting would charge ratepayers for 250,000 heat pumps for low-income residents. But regulators are balking at the cost. Heat pumps, as you’ll recall, are a priority of both President Joe Biden, whose Inflation Reduction Act provides tax credits of up to $2,000 for them, and Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose California Energy Commission last year set a goal of 6 million pumps by 2030. Southern California Edison laid out stark numbers in its pitch to the California Public Utilities Commission: The state is on track to install only 4.7 million pumps by 2030, according to the utility’s analysis. Charging customers up to $734 million — or less than $1 per month on average, according to the utility — would help make up the difference in SCE’s territory, it says.

Consumer advocacy groups including the CPUC’s Public Advocates Office and The Utility Reform Network also oppose the proposal. TURN says it would sour moderate-income customers on the energy transition by making them pay for others’ heat pumps, and would hurt low-income customers by switching them to more-expensive electricity instead of cheaper natural gas. “We’ve got to look at the big picture here and look at where we’re going,” said Mark Toney, TURN’s executive director. “Yes, we need to electrify and we’re in support of that, but there have got to be other ways to do it.”