Thanks to the government the cost of living and doing business in New Hampshire just went up again.

It goes like this.  In 2007 the state mandated that by 2025 providers get 25% of the energy they provide from renewable sources (Wood, wind, solar, etc) and that process (its called RPS, the Regional Portfolio Standard) is already under way .  This  Jan 1st 2009 we began the RGGI cap and trade scheme which requires energy providers to buy carbon credits quarterly whose increased costs are also passed on to rate payers.

So these government mandates are now pig-piling on top of your lifestyle, in a down economy no less, during a ten year cooling trend, all to solve a problem that doesn’t even appear to exist.    How bad is it–get the numbers on the jump.

The cost PSNH charges for energy in New Hampshire rose three times last year from .0882/KWH in Jan 2008 all the way to .09920 effective Dec 31 2008.

For those keeping score that’s at least a 12.5% increase in the cost of energy alone in one year. 

PSNH has managed to move some of their other  five rate categories around in an effort to soften the blow in previous years but not so much this time.  The total cost to rate payers, including the States consumption tax (which is the sixth rate category/KWH to follow on your bill and has not changed from .00055/KWH over the duration of my research) went from 12.404 cents/KWH in Jan 2005 to 15.36 cents/KWH today.  You see a 10% increase from Jan 2005 to Jan 2008, and 12.5% in the 12 months that followed.   Was 2005 a cheap year–maybe.  The rate spiked in 2006, went down 6% in 2007, but has climbed steadily since John “Watt-ch me sign state mandates on energy” Lynch, and the Democrat “it aint easy being green”  legislature  has felt compelled to solve the imagined threat of CO2 and global warming during the longest consecutive cooling trend in 30 years.   Just another bright idea from your government.

Now you can dice and slice these numbers all you want but the correlation is plain as day.  The total cost charged by PSNH went up 23 % over the past 5 years for a lot of reasons, but it went up 12% in the past year because of the increased cost of energy alone.  Conclusion–RPS and RGGI cost increases are driving up the cost of living in New Hampshire and its probably only going to get worse.

PSNH has made it clear that these mandates not only add to the cost of doing business-which is then imposed on rate payers, but that is also poses a risk to service . 

“PSNH supports the goals of both the RPS and RGGI initiatives, but believes they must be implemented in a way that does not cause irreparable economic harm to customers and the state’s economy or result in insufficient energy to meet customers’ demand.”

“Climate Change and Electricity in New Hampshire”PSNH-Feb 2008.

So we really could expect to see the risk of rolling blackouts–not unlike those California lives in danger of–as meeting the governments ongoing  requirements becomes more difficult.  Is the risk high, not yet; PSNH is not about to start a public relations nightmare on the slim possibility, but they have clearly made an effort to cover their back-sides by making public statements about what these mandates might mean to future service.

And all this duck and cover is just swell until you realize that New Hampshire is a net exporter of electricity.  Makes you wonder doesn’t it?  How a state  with more electricity than it knows what to do with could make rates go up and actually create the potential risk of rolling black outs all at the same time?  

It might not be so bad if there wasn’t a growing consensus that CO2 is not a driver of warming, or that the evidence shows us in a cooling trend. Yeah, our states democrat run government is that stupid.  Can’t see an economic downturn even when they are warned about it; can’t be bothered to check the global environmental trends from anyone but the authorized Daily KOS AGW consensus crowd. 

Looks like we’ve been Lynch’d yet again.   Open your eye’s New Hampshire.  The Dec 31st 2008 rate increase adds $60.00/year to the average rate payer at 500KHW/month.  Multiply that by the number of customers and it gets awfully close to the 14-18 million they estimate it will take to pay for RGGI in NH in2009.  And for what?

Don’t be surprised if they pilfer it to cover their mismanagement of the State budget.