There was cause for celebration yesterday after the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (“IURC”) extended the utility shut-off moratorium until August 14th. Sadly, tens of thousands of Hoosiers remain without shutoff protection as they are served by utilities not under the jurisdiction of the IURC. Therefore, the historic order by the IURC left out tens of thousands of Hoosier consumers who still face the looming threat of losing access to essential human services during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and an unprecedented global health pandemic.
Indiana’s large investor-owned electric and gas monopoly utilities filed a petition before the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (“IURC”) asking permission to allow them to categorize lower energy sales as an expense caused by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (“COVID-19”) and to allow them to collect those lost revenues from consumers. In other words, the investor-owned utilities want to charge consumers for the energy that they did not sell because of the global pandemic.
A coalition of public interest, social justice, watchdog and environmental groups are joining forces to hold Duke Energy, the largest investor-owned U.S. electric utility, accountable for its policies, which impact almost 8 million Americans in six states – and by extension, impede the nation’s progress toward a clean energy future.
These are the issues of immediate importance we are working on right now.
