SocraticGadfly: I call bullshit on alleged cheap Texas electricity

May 01, 2007

I call bullshit on alleged cheap Texas electricity

MSN Money’s Jim Jubak has the facts.
Texas residential customers already pay some of the highest prices for electricity in the country. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a residential customer in Texas paid an average rate of 12.09 cents per kilowatt-hour. Only the Northeast and California pay higher rates.

This is another lie, yes lie, of the majority of the Texas Legislature, including a few Democrats here and there, and the vast majority of the upper crust of the Texas GOP, that needs a stake through its heart once and for all.

Part of the problem, as people who follow the issue know, is that the “price to beat” is based on natural gas, not coal, setting aside environmental issues.

A bigger part of the problem sees Texas hoist by its own petard. “Texas is God” wingnuts, among other things, boast about its independent electric grid.

Well, that cuts both ways. Cheap out-of-state power can’t easily get to Texas. Hello???

Plus, the propsed KKR buyout of TXU will only make things worse.

Jubak said Texas being off the national electric grid is one problem.
Buyouts like that of TXU work only because of inefficiencies like this, and in the long run, buyout firms have an interest in perpetuating these inefficiencies so that local prices stay high.

Wunderbar.

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