SaskPower Rates To Increase Three Percent Effective January 1st

If you had a difficult time paying the September 1st four percent increase on your SaskPower bill this is a story you might want to scroll by if you don’t like to read bad news.

Due to the federal Carbon Tax SaskPower has announced effective January 1st, 2023 electrical bills will be increasing another three percent on a system wide basis.

The federal Carbon Tax will increase from $50 to $65 per tonne triggering the Carbon Tax rate rider on SaskPower bills. The Carbon Tax will increase to $130 per tonne in 2030.

Adopted in 2019 the federal government’s Carbon Tax is designed to progressively increase forcing the price of fossil fuels upwards. The goal of the increasing Carbon Tax is to force a reduction of burning of fossil fuels and the carbon dioxide produced.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas which the majority of climatologists see building up in the atmosphere and is responsible for climate change.

To reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced by their power generating plants SaskPower is moving away from coal fired plants and moving to more efficient and less carbon dioxide producing natural gas fired electrical generating plants such as the Great Plains electrical generating plant presently under construction in Moose Jaw.

SaskPower is also moving towards solar, wind and modular nuclear power generation to further reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced in their generation system.

SaskPower must collect the carbon tax through customer bills via a rate rider that is revised January 1 of every year.

The rate rider is based on an estimate of carbon taxes for the upcoming calendar year, and the difference between the amount collected and actual payment due is factored into the following year’s rate rider.