MN PUC Chair Katie Sieben on utility affordability

We earlier brought you a little bit of a snippet of the Public Utilities Commission informational session and testimony. The first of three informational sessions is they investigate the cost of utility services in Minnesota, gas and electric. They're taking public comment as well. To find out more about exactly how this is working and what the aims are, let's bring in the chair of the Public Utilities Commission um Katie Seban thanks for taking some time here today oh thanks for having me it's a pleasure to join you let's explain to people here what exactly it is that you're doing with these informational sessions and i know today's was how customers view affordability and the public comment what is the goal the goal of the investigation is to look for solutions about how we can help lower people's electric or natural gas utility bills. And certainly we have been hearing as a state agency from members of the public who are concerned about their ability to afford essential services. And the commission decided to launch an investigation to look for creative solutions for ways we can help people better afford, people and businesses, I should say, better afford their rate-regulated electric or natural gas service. And is this in advance of setting the rate across the state coming up? Or are these in creating ways in different services or, I guess, help paying the bill? I mean, what are the various things that this could lead to? The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission regulates our state's investor-owned electric and natural gas utility services. And so essentially what we're trying to do is find a balance to keep rates and bills as low as possible for businesses and families and individual households, while ensuring that the utility can deliver reliable and increasingly clean service and getting that right as you can imagine is quite a balance we do it through rate making docket specific cases that come up in front of the commission and this overall investigation is not a specific is not specifically focused on one natural gas or electric utility rather we're taking a step back and inviting the public to say what else do you think that the commission could do that the state legislature could do the federal government could do to help make gas and electricity more affordable for Minnesotans, because there are a whole bunch of different factors that go into making up someone's bills. And we want to do everything possible to ensure that that service is delivered as efficiently as possible. Yeah, and you heard today from Attorney General Keith Ellison there, he said, representing the citizens of Minnesota, kind of being their representative and encouraging. And I think the quote here was, balancing the interests of the customer with the interests of the utility shareholders and urging the commission to really keep those customers in mind. And with that too, what are you hearing? What's the feedback from the public in terms of affordability concerns for gas and electric? We're hearing from thousands of Minnesotans all over the state that they want to pay as little as possible but we're also here of course that's just like the given yeah obvious yeah but we also need to recognize and this is one of the careful balancing components of setting rates that when it's 20 degrees outside or it's you know 97 degrees outside and high humidity, can Minnesotans remain comfortable in their homes and safe? And so getting the balance right between keeping bills as low as possible is really important to a thriving economy. And we want to do everything we can to hear from the public, to hear from different stakeholders about, are there other things that we should consider or look to, to try to really, again, do everything possible to keep bills as affordable as possible, while ensuring that we still have robust essential service that is so critical to our state's economy. Yeah, I mean, you don't want to harm the utilities that are providing essential electric and gas for heating homes and powering them. You got to make sure that they remain viable to deliver that product. But at the same time, you don't want the citizens of Minnesota or the businesses to be energy poor either because the costs along with everything else have gotten too high. What's next in this investigation? So today, as you mentioned at the top. And we heard from a wide variety of stakeholders, Minnesota's Attorney General, a person representing a farmer's union, a person representing the Minneapolis Downtown Business Council, large industrial customers, low-income advocates, a national expert. And so we had a lot of great ideas put out on the table the complexity of the problem was discussed and the commission with the help of a facilitator is hosting two more public meetings that the public is welcome to watch and to weigh in on and we're going to build on what we heard today to try to come up with more concrete solutions, either regulatory or perhaps state legislative changes that folks can put out on the table and consider for a future legislature or governor or for, as I said earlier, or for the commission to consider in our normal regulatory work that we do. So we've wrapped up today's session. the public can still submit comments through the Minnesota PUC's website. And then there will be two other online and in-person meetings in the coming months. Okay. All right. Something that we all...