California’s Retail Electricity Price Highest in the Continental U.S. & More than Double the Western U.S. Average Price

Guest essay by Larry Hamlin

During the last 25 years (the period inclusive of 1999 to 2023) Democrats have controlled the legislature of the State of California and adopted ineffective, misguided and economically damaging energy and climate legislation that created skyrocketing electricity prices for California residents, businesses, and organizations. 

The state legislature has imposed these high prices and their resulting economic consequences despite the real world reality that their politically contrived measures are completely irrelevant regarding any ability to produce globally meaningful energy and climate outcomes as addressed here.

The Democrat legislature pushed these measures claiming that they are providing global “influence” and “leadership” regarding renewable energy use and emissions reductions.  

The developing nations (led by massive coal burning China and India) totally control global energy use and emissions outcomes and have completely ignored and dismissed the Democrats efforts to “influence” and “lead” the world with their mandated and ineffective renewable energy use and emissions reduction schemes. 

EIA average retail electricity price data provides the Total Electric Industry price in each state (as well the average across the U.S.) which includes price information from all full-service providers, restructured retail service providers, energy-only providers, and delivery-only service providers. These electric service provider categories comprise the total electricity supply services utilized within each state.

The EIA average retail electricity price data are established for Residential, Commercial, Industrial, Transportation and Other consumer categories with an overall Total price average included for each state as well the average across the U.S.     

Each states EIA average retail electricity price data for years 1990 through 2020 are available here with updated data for year 2021 total average retail electricity prices available here.

The year 2021 EIA total average retail electricity price data for each state and U.S. average are shown below as provided on the latter EIA data link noted above.

The EIA year 1999 Total Electric Industry average retail electricity price data for each state and U.S. average are shown below with the blue colored area providing the Residential, Commercial, Industrial, Transportation, Other and Total electricity price values respectively as provided on the first EIA data link noted above.  

California’s ill-conceived energy and climate Democrat driven legislative schemes have resulted in California’s 2021 average retail electricity price now becoming, for the first time ever, the highest in the continental United States at 19.65 cents per kilowatt hour with an increase in price of 224.6% since the 1999 value of 8.75 cents per kilowatt hour.

During the 1999 to 2021 period EIA data shows that the average retail electricity price for the entire U.S. grew by only 67.16% (from 6.64 cents per kilowatt hour in 1999 to 11.10 cents per kilowatt hour in 2021) which is a factor of 3.34 times lower growth increase than occurred in California’s average retail electricity prices.

The map shown below shows California’s neighboring continental U.S. contiguous western states that share many of the same energy and climate characteristics of this region including extensively wide-ranging areas of desert, forest, and mountainous terrain along with normally occurring weather driven events involving droughts, wildfires, heat waves, freezing cold, significantly varying rainfall and snow, etc.

The 10 other states that make up the continental western U.S. region have a year 2021 average retail electricity price of only 9.19 cents per kilowatt hour verses California’s 2021 record high average retail electricity price of 19.65 cents per kilowatt hour. 

Incredibly, California’s year 2021 average retail electricity price has now grown to be 214% greater than the average of the other 10 western continental U.S. states. 

In year 1999 California’s average retail electricity price was only about 72% greater (8.75 cents per kilowatt hour versus 5.08 cents per kilowatt hour for the other 10 western states) than the average of the other western region states.   

The huge change amounting to nearly a factor of 3 growth in the average retail electricity price difference between California and the 10 other western states over this period has negatively impacted and been economically damaging to California with this outcome occurring because of the Democrats incompetently crafted energy and climate policy legislation.   

Given the extraordinary growth of California’s average retail electricity prices over the 1999 to 2021 period versus the much lower growth in these prices that occurred in the rest of the nation, including all of California’s contiguous western region states, the Democrats in the California legislature should be required to justify and be held accountable by the state’s voters for why and how these economically damaging extremely high electricity price increases were instigated and allowed to occur under their watch.

These huge California electricity price increases have had no meaningful impact on reducing global fossil fuel use or global emissions reductions nor have they had any impact on changing global energy and emissions policy actions of the world’s developing nations that dominate and control global energy use and emissions outcomes.