Low-income electricity customers in N.B. made to compete with others for help

Low-income electricity customers in New Brunswick have to compete with moderate-income customers for help with efficiency and other cost-saving upgrades, N.B. Power's rate hearing heard Monday.

That makes it difficult to get assistance to those who need help the most quickly, according to Jennifer Kallay, a Massachusetts-based expert in utility "demand-side" management programs.

"Most utilities start with low income and subsequently add moderate income over time, so those two populations are distinct," said Kallay about how other jurisdictions generally try and help low-income customers first.

"In some cases the programs are separate, the incentives are separate and the designs are different for those two populations."

In February, N.B. Power disclosed it was sorting through 12,335 applications from low- and moderate-income customers who have applied for various energy assistance programs funded by the federal and provincial governments and administered by N.B. Power.

Those include programs to help people replace oil furnaces with heat pumps, improve insulation, replace windows and make other upgrades.

Because of the high volume of applications for help, it's expected that some households will have to wait for up to two years for assistance. Kallay said N.B. Power is hampered in directing aid to the lowest-income households first because it does not distinguish between those and other households. 

"They do not have a threshold that would delineate the difference between a low-income and moderate-income customer for this purpose," said Kallay, who was hired by the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board to analyze N.B. Power programs as part of its ongoing rate hearing.

N.B. Power is currently in front of the EUB asking for an average 19.4 per cent rate increase spread over two years, including a 9.25 per cent increase this year and another 9.25 per cent increase beginning next April.

Proposed increases to residential and large industrial customers are even higher, totalling 20.6 per cent over the two years.

The effect of those increases on low-income groups has been examined in some depth during the hearings with the participation of community groups specifically concerned with those issues, including the Saint John Human Development Council and the New Brunswick Coalition of Persons with Disabilities.

On Monday, the Human Development Council called its own witnesses who testified New Brunswick lacks sufficient programs to help lower-income families deal with the size of the rate increase N.B. Power is seeking.

"Rate increases like this can have significant impacts upon households, especially those that are low income," said the council's Heather Atcheson.

"When people are already struggling to meet basic needs for housing and eating, it amplifies the overall experience of poverty and hardship on families."

N.B. Power has argued there is little it can do to create programs for low-income customers without specific direction from the provincial government.