SOUTH BURLINGTON — Vermont Gas last week announced it has asked the Public Utility Commission to approve a 3.8 percent rate reduction beginning this coming November.
“We made a commitment to keep rates low and stable for our customer and today’s proposal is about helping families and businesses save money and reduce their energy needs,” Vermont Gas CEO Don Rendall said. “To put this filing into perspective, since 2011 our rates have gone down over 16 percent. That means that with this proposed reduction, the typical family will pay about $270 less on their heating bills than they were seven years ago.”
Rendall claimed that customers converting to natural gas from fuel oil would reduce their carbon emissions by more than 23 percent.
The decrease that Vermont Gas asked the regulator to approved represents the net of a 14.8 percent decline in the natural gas charge, a 4 percent increase in the daily access and distribution charges, and a request to return $8.1 million of the System Expansion and Reliability Fund (“SERF”) back to customers through lower rates. This filing also includes the full benefit of lower federal income tax expense associated with the recently enacted tax laws. Customers have begun to see the benefits of that tax rate reduction in the form of lower energy bills this month.