(The Center Square) – Energy bills shot up by 12% this year for Puget Sound Energy customers due to the state-approved recovery of costs related to Climate Commitment Act compliance, expanding clean energy portfolios, and critical grid reliability investments. That’s nothing, compared to what the utility is asking for in a new three-year rate change plan.
PSE is asking the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission to approve its plan to increase its electric bill rates by nearly 30% and gas bills nearly 20% by 2029 for residential rate payers.
“Customer rates increased on January 1 of this year, driven in large part by costs to comply with the Climate Commitment Act on the natural gas side, and increased power costs for electric customers as a result of PSE needing to purchase more renewable energy and replace energy from legacy coal providers under the Clean Electricity Transformation Act,” PSE Public Relations Manager Melanie Coon emailed The Center Square.
“In August 2025, PSE began charging electric customers to recover the costs of complying with CCA in excess of the free allowances we receive.”
Data center construction to keep up with the energy-hungry demands of Artificial Intelligence is also putting strain on the system.
A bill that was moving rapidly through the state Legislature seeks to hold data centers accountable, placing the burden on securing resources on the operators of those facilities.
House Bill 2515 has cleared the House of Representatives and was set for executive session in the Senate Ways & Means Committee Monday, but no action was taken.
Coons said the new rate change request comes because “there is a significant investment in new CETA eligible resources – there are 11 new projects included in the case.”
Coon added it would not be accurate to assign the full cost of those resources to policy choices.
“Our case also includes the costs of new natural gas fired capacity resources to meet peak demands when energy from the renewables is not available. Approximately 40% of the rate proposal is tied acquiring all of these resources”
Pomeroy Republican Rep. Mary Dye, who is the ranking minority on the House Environment & Energy Committee, told The Center Square on Thursday that PSE’s request to dramatically increase energy bills is a direct result of Democrats’ pushing clean energy policies, while shareholders benefit and customers suffer.
“They’re building wind and solar projects all across the state in order to meet goals of the Clean Energy Transformation Act that was passed in 2019,” Dye said. “In order to meet their compliance obligation as a utility, they have to construct renewable energy projects, and they have been doing to with vim and gusto. It costs a lot of money to build a wind farm and to build a solar farm. Who pays for that and who benefits?”
Dye said PSE is an investor-owned utility and the stockholders are the ones benefiting from these projects.
“The problem is those projects and what it generates don’t improve capacity on the grid because it only works when the wind blows and sun shines,” she said. “So, you basically have to double the generation capacity to meet the times when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.”
