Pa. Gov. Josh Shapiro touts agreement to prevent spike in electricity bills

Gov. Josh Shapiro said Wednesday Pennsylvanians will not have to absorb the state electric grid operator’s proposed rate hikes in coming years, thanks to a federal complaint he and other governors filed in December. “If we had done nothing here .

.. you would have seen historically high utility bills jacked up 30%,” Shapiro told reporters Wednesday morning.



PJM Interconnection, the company which manages the electricity grid in 13 states, had proposed a new rate structure that Shapiro said would cost electric consumers $21 billion through 2028 — or a few hundred dollars more per household each year. But on Dec. 30, Shapiro and governors of Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and Illinois announced they had sued the operator.

Weeks later, PJM agreed to a price cap and other changes, pending a federal regulatory committee’s review. “They've been jacking up prices on consumers here in Pennsylvania and across those other states that PJM serves,” Shapiro said. His administration accused the operator of bringing new power sources onto its grid too slowly, creating scarcity that increased prices along with the burden on the region’s energy generators.

PJM, which also supplies electricity to Ohio and West Virginia, said in a statement that it has “been discussing the concepts of a market cap and a market floor with the Shapiro administration” for the past week. As part of the settlement, PJM will add generators like the soon-to-be-restarted Three Mile Island nuclear power plant onto the grid. Last year, Microsoft made a deal with hopes of having TMI power its data centers by 2028.

The grid operator says the rate agreement is still subject to federal regulators’ approval. Elizabeth Marx, who leads the PA Utility Law Project, celebrated the settlement. She said rising utility prices led to “energy and water insecurity” that resulted in some 377,000 families affected by electric, gas or water shutoffs — a 15% increase from the year before.

But despite this week’s deal, “rising electricity costs are still on the horizon,” Marx warned. “We need to work together to transform energy markets and shepherd in just and equitable energy futures.” She called on the legislature to create policies that avoid shutoffs amid collection disputes, and expand the low-income home energy assistance program, or LIHEAP, for “struggling families and seniors.

” PennFuture, a Harrisburg-based green energy advocacy group, also applauded the settlement, but said the state should invest more in renewable projects to lower energy costs. In a statement, the nonprofit called PJM “an unelected quasi-governmental agency”: Patrick McDonnell, PennFuture’s president and CEO, said the settlement does “not fix” PJM’s outsized influence on the market. Critics on the right were even less impressed.

Nathan Benefield of the conservative Commonwealth Foundation called Shapiro’s announcement “nothing more than a red herring” meant to distract from green-energy proposals that he blamed for rising costs. Shapiro could achieve bigger savings, he argued, by ending the state’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which charges polluters for emissions that add to global climate change. “Shapiro should spend less time congratulating himself and instead deliver on his unfulfilled campaign promises to work with the legislature to reduce the burden on families and businesses,” Benefield said in a statement.

The state’s outgoing Consumer Advocate Patrick Cicero, who resigned from the role after Republican Attorney General Dave Sunday assumed office, declined to comment. Cicero’s resignation goes into effect on Friday..