The thermostat is dropping day by day and utility bills are climbing.<\/p>\n
The frigid weather has people cranking up the heat.<\/p>\n
As many pay more to keep things warm in this extreme cold, utilities in the Lehigh Valley and beyond are seeking further rate increases.<\/p>\n
UGI is requesting a nearly 9% rate increase for natural gas customers. It would add about $10 to the average residential customer’s monthly bill.<\/p>\n
“It’s affecting everybody,” said Irene Ibemsi, a UGI customer.<\/p>\n
It’s only January, but Ibemsi said he’s concerned about his, and other customers’, electric and natural gas bills through the rest of this winter season.<\/p>\n
“We should pay the same bill every month already. The bill is too high,” said Ibemsi.<\/p>\n
UGI’s latest rate increase request has launched a nearly-year long PUC investigation.<\/p>\n
PPL is also asking the PUC for a 7% electric distribution rate increase. That would add about $13 a month to a typical residential customer’s bill.<\/p>\n
The PUC said a final decision on PPL’s proposed rate increase is due by July 1st.<\/p>\n
It’s an issue that Republican State Rep. Gary Day , who represents part of Lehigh County, said he has been working to address.<\/p>\n
He introduced a bill, the Municipal Electric Ratepayer Protection Act, known as “MERPA”. It’s meant to help residents band together through their municipality and purchase in bulk, potentially securing better rates.<\/p>\n
“Whether it’s electric, gas or oil, let residents decide and tell their municipality, ‘hey, we’d like to be in the group,'” said Day.<\/p>\n
Day said the bill is it’s early stages.<\/p>\n
In New Jersey, Governor Mikie Sherrill has declared a state of emergency on utility costs. The move freezes rate increases.<\/p>\n
During a news conference last week, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said he met with utility company leaders and will have more to say in his annual budget address.<\/p>\n
“I intend to talk about next steps we’re going to be taking in this effort to be able to curb utility price hikes,” said Shapiro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The thermostat is dropping day by day and utility bills are climbing. The frigid weather has people cranking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,232,153,155,154,60,433,805],"class_list":["post-100339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown-area","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-business","tag-lehigh-county","tag-lehighvalley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}