BOSTON, May 9 (Reuters) - Millions of Americans are unknowingly financing electric grid projects before they get any benefit.
Policy-makers, in an urgent bid to overhaul the nation’s aging electric grid, are increasingly letting utilities charge customers for power plants and transmission lines long before they’ve been built, boosting near-term bills in exchange for promised savings decades down the road, according to a Reuters review of regulatory disclosures.
At least 40 U.S. states now have some form of CWIP incentive, according to a Reuters review of several thousand pages of electric utility rate disclosures. That’s twice as many as a decade ago, when a survey by economic consultant The Brattle Group found fewer than 20 states with CWIP provisions.
Details on how widely CWIP policies have spread in the past five years alongside the boom in data center construction have not been previously reported. Reuters also interviewed two dozen industry officials, analysts, and consumer watchdogs to reflect the impact of these policies on the buildout and repair of the grid and on the electricity bills of American households and businesses.
Reuters found that CWIP policies have been used to finance a range of large energy and infrastructure projects, including the Vogtle nuclear reactors in Georgia, which experienced significant cost overruns and delays; a Nevada transmission project that is increasing bills now for financial benefits expected decades in the future; and a Virginia offshore wind farm that has already collected about $2 billion in ratepayer charges before beginning operations.
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