CHARLESTON, W.Va. –Policy director for Energy Efficient West Virginia and Charleston City Council member Emmett Pepper says that the main concern among voters right now is their high utility bills especially energy and how nothing has been done about it.
“That is the top issue, and we saw unfortunately this legislative session was nothing, nothing to help people with their rates,” Pepper said recently on MetroNews Midday.
He mentioned that they wanted to get rid of help any income held and that AEP southern wants to stop contributing to a fund that helps those who’s service is getting ready to be turned off.
Pepper and his group conducted a survey with 500 register voters from March 29th to April 1st.
He said that it didn’t matter to the voters on what they used to generate energy as long as it was affordable.
“One of the things we asked was are willing to pay a little bit extra for solar, are you willing to pay a little bit extra for coal, because we have a thought that coal is very important to West Virginians, the answer was no,” Pepper said.
On order to fix this issue of having bills that are too high for WV residents, is to get some help from WV lawmakers because that’s what people want.
“Give us more options to both reduce our energy cost through solar and efficiency, do whatever you can, when we’re making the decisions about out utilities to make it less expensive,” Pepper said.
The West Virginia Public Service Commission were listening to a case on AEP and their base rate increase in things that could potentially see a 26-dollar increase
He says that he has stepped into the case and is making sure everyone knows about.
“We’ve been doing what we can to help people understand it, to help facilitate that and actually in this case AEP case that’s half the states there have been I believe more comments than any other case, we’re at about 5,000 comments on the case and that’s overwhelming,” he said.