(Bloomberg) — Pushback over rising customer power bills risks slowing the purge of fossil fuels from electric grids, according to the head of one the largest US power companies.
“To clean the grid is going to cost money,” Exelon Corp. Chief Executive Officer Calvin Butler said in an interview Friday at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. “You’re going to have to build, strengthen and make the system more resilient because of climate change.”
Exelon ran into that conflict head-on in December when Illinois regulators rejected the company’s ambitious grid plans, saying the utility wasn’t doing enough to keep customer bills low. The unexpected setback sent the shares plunging 16% over a three-day period.
The tension between clean energy and cost is emerging across the US, with regulators and consumer advocates pushing back against rising power bills. Butler stressed that the energy transition doesn’t happen without…
