NDP pushing utility review board changes to facilitate affordable power rates
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The New Democratic Party is calling for significant structural changes in the way that Nova Scotia Power is regulated.
“High power rates, high profits of the company need to be addressed but they need to be addressed systematically,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said in the legislature Wednesday to open second reading of the Equity and Sustainability in Electrical Utilities Act she tabled on March 24.
The NDP leader said the structural changes would permit the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board (NSUARB) to create a program to make power more affordable for lower-income residential customers by ensuring that no residential customer would pay more than six per cent of household income on home energy.
“What we see on the floor of the legislature right now is an 11th-hour intervention that essentially kneecaps the independent regulatory process,” Chender said. “What we have been advocating for is a change in the regulatory process.”
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Chender said Wednesday the NSUARB is a creature of the legislature.
“We can determine how it regulates but then we need to set it free to do the regulations at arm’s-length, something this government is clearly not interested in.”
Chender said the NDP has put forward a slew of ideas on how to accomplish that, primary among them a performance-based regulatory system, a system that incentivizes ecological sustainability and clean energy.
“Right now, Nova Scotia Power is incentivized to do one thing, sell power,” Chender said. “As we reduce our need for power through efficiency, that is in direct cross-purposes with Nova Scotia Power’s raison d’etre.”
She said government’s job is to ensure that everyone in the province has access to electricity.
“That’s really important because it’s very clear in our climate that power is essential," Chender said in an interview. "You can’t live without power. Even with this (government) bill that’s likely to pass in the legislature, the cost will still skyrocket because of fuel and other pressures and people simply can’t afford it. It’s really important that people are able to keep the lights on. This government has shown a willingness to intervene in regulatory matters but from our perspective this kind of intervention now is just kicking the can down the road.”
Nova Scotia Power crews work on installing new poles and lines along Highfield Park Drive in Dartmouth in the wake of tropical storm Fiona. - Eric Wynne / The Chronicle Herald
Chender said a structural intervention in the way NSUARB conducts its business could create a universal service program that the board can't create now because it is not legally permitted to discriminate within a rate class, meaning it must charge everyone in the class the same rate.
“Find a way to create a universal service program so that the people who can’t afford power are able to pay for it,” Chender said of government’s task.
Chender has also talked about the PC’s environmental goals legislation that creates targets for NSP to reach without providing any repercussions if those targets aren’t met.
“When that environmental legislation was moving through the legislature, we pushed for benchmarks and a path and an understanding of how we’re actually going to get there,” Chender said. “We still don’t have a climate plan. This is also why when the government said to the federal government, we don’t need to price carbon, we have legislation, the federal government said that’s not the same thing.
"Nothing happens if you don’t follow your legislation. It’s aspirational, it’s positive, we support it in theory but we have no guarantee it’s going to get us where we need to go.”
Because NSP doesn’t face any penalty for not meeting targets “Peter Gregg came to law amendments and said either it’s this (government) bill or the 2030 deadline,” Chender said.
“No private company should be able to come to the legislature and say we’re going to break the law, which is essentially what he is saying. He can say that because there are no repercussions and that’s why we have been pushing for more performance-based measures, again that the NSUARB can implement in how Nova Scotia Power is run and is compensated.”
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