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Tag Archives: Utility
20 million US homes can’t pay utility bills as shutoffs loom
More than 20 million households face a “tsunami of shutoffs” after falling behind on their utility bills as the price for electricity skyrockets because of decades-high inflation, experts predict.
Since the pre-pandemic era, the amount owed to utility companies has doubled for approximately one out of every six homes nationwide, according to Bloomberg News.
State governments had imposed moratoriums on utility shutoffs as tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
But as states lifted lockdown measures following the mass vaccination drive, record levels of inflation put a stranglehold on the economy, driving up the cost of essential goods and services such as electricity, natural gas, fuel, and groceries.
Jean Su, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Bloomberg News that the soaring utility costs will trigger a “tsunami of shutoffs.”
The most recent consumer price index report shows that electricity inflation rose by 15.2% in July compared to the same period a year ago.
The cost of electricity rose month-over-month by 1.9% in July.
Last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report indicating that inflation rose 8.5% — down slightly from 9.1% in June.
Analysts attribute the sharp price hikes to tightening supplies of natural gas, which is used to generate electricity.
Disruptions in the supply chain caused by the COVID pandemic as well as the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine have put pressure on the natural gas markets.
As of Thursday midday, natural gas was trading at around $9.35 per Metric Million British Thermal Unit (MMBtu). A year ago at this time, natural gas was less than half of today’s cost — $4.26 per MMBtu.
Soaring utility bills are coming at an inopportune moment as hundreds of millions of Americans were forced to rely on energy-intensive air conditioning to keep them cool during scorching heat waves this summer.
Energy use from US cryptomining firms is contributing to rising utility bills | Cryptocurrencies
The largest US cryptomining companies have the capacity to use as much electricity as nearly every home in Houston, Texas; energy use that is contributing to rising utility bills, according to an investigation by Democratic lawmakers.
Cryptomining is a highly energy intensive process involving the use of specialized computers running constantly to solve complex math problems in order to create new virtual coins.
Energy use in the industry is greater than that of entire countries. The US has become the center of cryptomining after it was banned in China. More than a third of the global computing power dedicated to mining bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, comes from the US, Senator Elizabeth Warren and five other Democrats reported in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency.
“The results of our investigation … are disturbing … revealing that cryptominers are large energy users that account for a significant – and rapidly growing – amount of carbon emissions,” the letter states. “It is imperative that your agencies work together to address the lack of information about cryptomining’s energy use and environmental impacts.”
The congressional Democrats have asked the EPA and the Department of Energy to require cryptominers to disclose emissions and energy use, noting that regulators know little about the full environmental impact of the industry.
The lawmakers solicited information from seven of the largest US cryptomining companies, including Stronghold, Greenidge, Bit Digital, Bitfury, Riot, BitDeer and Marathon, about their energy sources and consumption and the climate impacts of their operations. The data revealed that the industry is using a substantial amount of electricity, ramping up production and creating significant carbon emissions at a time when the US needs to drastically reduce emissions to combat the climate crisis.
Emissions data from three companies, Bit Digital, Greenidge and Stronghold, indicated their operations create 1.6m tons of CO2 annually, an amount produced by nearly 360,000 cars. Their environmental impact is significant despite industry claims about clean energy use and climate commitments, the lawmakers wrote.
“Bitcoin miners are using huge quantities of electricity that could be used for other priority end uses that contribute to our electrification and climate goals, such as replacing home furnaces with heat pumps,” the letter states.
“The current energy use of cryptomining is resulting in large amounts of carbon emissions and other adverse air quality impacts, as well as impacts to the electric grid.”
The power demands of the industry are also coming at a cost to consumers, the letter states, citing a study that found cryptomining operations in upstate New York led to a rise in electric bills by roughly $165m for small businesses and $79m for individuals.
In Texas, which has become a cryptomining hub, the industry is expected to continue to expand significantly in the coming years, increasing the amount of electrical load to nearly a third of the grid’s current maximum capacity over the next four years and straining the system, according to a report from the Verge.
“The more crypto mining that comes into the state, the higher the residents should expect the electricity prices to become,” Eric Hittinger, a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, told the outlet.
The cryptocurrency market has crashed in recent months, dropping in value from more than $3tn in November 2021 to less than $1tn.
France plans full nationalisation of power utility EDF
PARIS, July 6 (Reuters) – France will fully nationalise EDF (EDF.PA), Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said on Wednesday, in a move that would give the government more control over a restructuring of the debt-laden group while contending with a European energy crisis.
EDF, in which the state already owns 84%, is one of Europe’s biggest utilities and sits at the heart of France’s nuclear strategy, which the government is banking on to blunt the impact of soaring energy prices exacerbated by the prospect of an abrupt halt to Russian gas supplies.
But instead of being an ace in the government’s hands, however, it has become a major headache owing to years of delays on new nuclear plants in France and Britain, with budget overruns in the billions of euros.
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“I confirm to you today that the state intends to control 100% of EDF’s capital”, Borne said in her policy speech in the lower house of parliament as she set out her minority’s government priorities. read more
“We need to ensure our sovereignty in the face of the war (in Ukraine) and the looming colossal challenges.”
At current market prices, buying out the stake the government does not already own would cost around 5 billion euros ($5.09 billion).
EDF has faced a litany of problems this year. Half of its ageing reactors in France are currently offline, partlydue to corrosion problems, forcing it to cut nuclear output repeatedly at a time when Europe is scrambling to find alternatives to Russian gas supplies.
The utility has also been hurt by government moves forcing it to sell power to rivals at a discount as part of efforts to shield French consumers from a sharp increase in the cost of living.
That is a big strain on EDF’s finances because the group sells forward its estimated nuclear output before the end of the budget year and has to buy back sold electricity in a volatile market with prices at historic highs.
The company says output losses will reduce its core profit this year by 18.5 billion euros and the discounted power sales will cost it a further 10.2 billion euros. Its debt is projected to rise by 40% this year to more than 61 billion euros. Meanwhile, planned new-generation nuclear reactors require investments of more than 50 billion euros.
The option of fully nationalising EDF had been flagged by President Emmanuel Macron earlier this year but the picture has since become more complicated as he lost his absolute majority in parliament.
He already had to scrap an overhaul of EDF last year in the face of opposition from unions and doubts voiced by the European Commission.
That plan envisaged placing EDF’s profitable renewables business in a new company unburdened by the debt-laden nuclear assets.
Borne did not specify if the nationalisation would be carried out via special legislation or through a public tender to buy out minority shareholders, and did not provide a time frame.
The CGT union said that without a radical overhaul of the way in which nuclear power prices are set, a nationalisation of EDF would not fix its woes and may be a pretext to break it up.
EDF was listed on the Paris bourse in 2005 at a price of 33 euros per share. Its stock closed at just under 9 euros on Wednesday, having jumped 14.5% after Borne’s announcement .
Analysts and bankers have said that going straight to the market to squeeze out minorities and delist EDF would be a quicker process, while any legislation runs the risk of being held up in parliament.
($1 = 0.9819 euros)
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writing by Silvia Aloisi
Editing by Jason Neely David Goodman and Marguerita Choy
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Mac utility Homebrew finally gets native Apple Silicon and M1 support
Enlarge / Users can install Homebrew via the Terminal in macOS.
Samuel Axon
Popular Mac tool Homebrew has long been used by developers and others for package management on macOS, but as we lamented in our first M1 Mac review, it didn’t support Apple Silicon when Apple’s new Macs first launched late last year. Now, with the release of Homebrew 3.0.0, that’s no longer the case: Homebrew now supports Apple Silicon natively, albeit not with every package.
The volunteer Homebrew team made the announcement on the Homebrew blog alongside today’s release. While the native support is not yet comprehensive, it bridges the gap significantly, and users can still run Terminal via Rosetta 2 to do what they can’t yet while running natively on Apple Silicon. The Homebrew blog post says “we welcome your help” in providing bottles for all packages moving forward.
Here’s the full bullet point on Apple Silicon in the Homebrew 3.0.0 release notes:
Apple Silicon is now officially supported for installations in /opt/homebrew. formulae.brew.sh formula pages indicate for which platforms bottles (binary packages) are provided and therefore whether they are supported by Homebrew. Homebrew doesn’t (yet) provide bottles for all packages on Apple Silicon that we do on Intel x86_64 but we welcome your help in doing so. Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon still provides support for Intel x86_64 in /usr/local.
Aside from the inability to natively run Windows, the lack of Homebrew was one of the small number of problems we dinged the Apple Silicon Macs for when we reviewed them, and some of our editorial staff have named this as the number one reason they’ve been holding off on moving to Apple Silicon. Some other users likely share the sentiment, though most macOS users never use tools like this, of course.
In celebrating the update, the Homebrew team gave “particular thanks” to MacStadium and to Apple. Specifically, the blog post notes that Apple provided the team with Apple Silicon hardware to do the work, and thanks “Cassidy from Apple for helping us in many ways with this migration.”
Other major changes since the previous Homebrew release, 2.7.0, are listed in the blog post as follows:
- brew bottle and bottle do blocks use a new syntax format (one :cellar per platform). brew style –fix will autocorrect formulae to this new format. This will allow more bottles to be relocatable.
- The new HOMEBREW_BOOTSNAP environment variable allows the use of the Bootsnap gem to speed up repeated brew calls. This does not work (yet) on Apple Silicon or using Homebrew’s portable Ruby.
- Various methods have been deprecated, disabled and removed
- Bash, fish and zsh completions are generated automatically from the CLI::Parser DSL. This will ensure they are kept up-to-date.
- brew update better handles upstream branch renames (e.g. from master to main)
- brew completions is a new command to opt-in to completions provided by third-party taps
Utility to pay $2B settlement in deadly 2018 California fire
Southern California Edison will pay $2.2 billion to settle insurance claims from a deadly, destructive wildfire sparked by its equipment in 2018, the utility announced Monday. Edison, which acknowledged no wrongdoing, said the agreement covers all claims in pending lawsuits from insurance companies related to the Woolsey fire, which blackened 151 square miles (391 square kilometers) of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Three people died in the November 2018 fire, and more than 1,600 homes and other buildings were destroyed.In addition, Edison said it has finalized settlements from the December 2017 Thomas fire and mudslides a month later on land that burned. “We have made another significant step toward resolving pending wildfire-related litigation,” Edison CEO Pedro Pizarro said in the statement. Total expected losses for the 2017 and 2018 events are estimated to be $4.6 billion, the utility statement said. “The settlement was fair to all and consistent with prior cases against Edison and other utilities,” Craig Simon, co-lead counsel for the insurance companies, said in a statement to the Ventura County Star.Investigations determined Edison equipment sparked both the Woolsey and Thomas fires. In recent years, utility equipment has been blamed for multiple wildfires across the state. The state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, was forced into bankruptcy in 2019 after facing liability for devastating blazes in Northern California.
LOS ANGELES —
Southern California Edison will pay $2.2 billion to settle insurance claims from a deadly, destructive wildfire sparked by its equipment in 2018, the utility announced Monday.
Edison, which acknowledged no wrongdoing, said the agreement covers all claims in pending lawsuits from insurance companies related to the Woolsey fire, which blackened 151 square miles (391 square kilometers) of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Three people died in the November 2018 fire, and more than 1,600 homes and other buildings were destroyed.
In addition, Edison said it has finalized settlements from the December 2017 Thomas fire and mudslides a month later on land that burned.
“We have made another significant step toward resolving pending wildfire-related litigation,” Edison CEO Pedro Pizarro said in the statement.
Total expected losses for the 2017 and 2018 events are estimated to be $4.6 billion, the utility statement said.
“The settlement was fair to all and consistent with prior cases against Edison and other utilities,” Craig Simon, co-lead counsel for the insurance companies, said in a statement to the Ventura County Star.
Investigations determined Edison equipment sparked both the Woolsey and Thomas fires. In recent years, utility equipment has been blamed for multiple wildfires across the state.
The state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, was forced into bankruptcy in 2019 after facing liability for devastating blazes in Northern California.