Energy efficiency fee to be removed from N.S. power bills next year
Posted Apr 8, 2014 07:31:29 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
HALIFAX – A fee added to power bills in Nova Scotia to pay for efficiency programs would be removed next year under legislation introduced today by the provincial government.
Amendments to the Public Utilities Act would also give the Utility and Review Board regulatory oversight of efficiency programs to determine whether they are affordable and require Nova Scotia Power to cover the costs of efficiency programs.
Energy Minister Andrew Younger says electricity bills will go down beginning Jan. 1 as a result of the changes.
Although the energy efficiency fee would be removed, Nova Scotia Power would be allowed to spend up to $35 million to pay for efficiency programs in their first year and would be permitted to recover those costs from customers over eight years beginning Jan. 1, 2016.
Younger says Nova Scotia Power has also agreed to pay $37 million over the next 10 years to upgrade all low-income electrically heated homes in the province.
Progressive Conservative Leader Jamie Baillie dismisses the changes as a ”gigantic shell game.”
“I believe that the Liberals made an irresponsible promise in the last election and now they’ve built a big house of cards to try and make it look like they’re keeping it but if they were truly keeping it, it wouldn’t be this complicated,” he says.
Baillie says taking the fee off one line and adding it back on to another later is not a step forward.
The Liberals were elected last year after campaigning to remove the energy efficiency fee, estimated to cost customers about $46 million annually.
