Ontario isn’t the only place that is being hit with over the top electricity prices, California has the highest power rates in North America.
Many low-income families must decide to buy food or stay cool , similar to Ontario when many families were cut off during the summer and fall because they could no longer afford the price of keeping the lights on.
Ontario may want to take a look at what the state of California is doing to help people manage. The state announced a program to take low-income families off the grid and gives them free solar panels to do it.
As electricity prices soared in the sunshine state, the wealthy were the ones getting off grid, that meant the mid to low income earners are left paying for the power system with higher fees.
The state argues that the wealthy shouldn’t be the only ones benefiting from solar panel energy and initiated a program. California will spend about $300 million until 2020 on low-income solar programs, and a few other states like Colorado and New York are investing in similar programs. As well, in August the federal government launched a “solar access for all” initiative to help bring clean power to some of the almost 50 million American households that earn less than $40,000 a year CBC reports
Though Ontario introduced it’s green energy polices, it has come with a huge cost that has put the province in a crisis with no end in sight to increasing energy costs both in electricity and the ever growing delivering charges as well with natural gas that now has a cap and trade carbon pricing affixed to your home heating costs, Ontarians are facing bigger bills in the next few years.
