Alternate headline: "Public utilities subsidize 19% of electricity charges."

It's not even that though. Looks like public utilities are only offered in areas where those utilities are cheap to provide or abundant, and private utilities fill in a gap in harder to reach areas.

The study even points this out as a foot-note but then focuses on rate of price increase versus nominal price. It should not come as a surprise that in areas where utilities are less abundant the price will increase faster than in areas where that same utility is plentiful.

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cwal37 4 hours ago | parent [-]

That’s roughly the opposite of the development of electric utilities in the US. The IOUs owned dense urban areas and refused to electrify further out. It was only the rise of public municipal utilities that got them to go to the states, implement the regulatory compact, be granted rate of return, etc., and then they began building out more.

	▲	bluGill 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That is the historic situation yes. However it doesn't change how things are today. the municipal utilities that remain have lower costs because they don't have the more expensive structures.

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darreninthenet 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Or "investor owned utilities pay out c-level bonuses and dividends equal to 23% of actual costs"

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GuB-42 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Some of it goes to bonuses and dividends, but 23% is a really big number.

I think a big part of that number is risk, dividends are tied to risk too.

The very idea of investing is that you take risks in exchange for profits. That is, if it fails, you lose your capital, if it succeeds, you become richer. A public provider doesn't work the same way, risk is covered by taxpayer money. If it fails, taxpayers foot the bill, if it succeeds, cheaper service.

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javcasas 4 hours ago | parent [-]

NEE profit margin is currently 40.37% https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NEE/nextera-energy...

From that, NEE pays 43.72% in dividends.

If we multiply these two numbers, we end up at 17.64% in dividends ALONE.

23% is not a really big number by a long shot.

	▲	missedthecue 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		NEE isn't a pure utility, they are a hybrid of two businesses. Their Florida Power & Light (FPL) subsidiary is a regulated utility which the state government caps ROEs of at 10.95%. Their other subsidiary is NextEra Energy Resources, which is not a regulated utility, and has 60% net margins. This business is basically an unregulated competitive wind and solar developer. They take full risk if they can't sell their power, but can build wherever they think there are customers willing to pay. 35% of their power is sold straight to industrial customers at private contracted prices, the rest into the grid.

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4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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x187463 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Alternate headline: "Profit-seeking organizations seek profit"

	▲	method_capital 42 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Right. Governments don't have profits. In the last 30 years, they've all racked up massive amounts of debt. What do we call what the guys who run our government make since they only have debt (and not profits to speak of ...).