Why are rebates more effective than relying on utility companies or LIHEAP?
An alternative approach to consumer relief — providing billions of dollars to utility companies to artificially suppress increases in electric and gas bills that would otherwise occur under an emissions cap — is ill-advised. Over half of the increase in costs that consumers would face under an emissions cap would be for energy-related costs other than home utilities (such as gasoline and goods and services with energy inputs). So keeping households’ utility bills down would still leave vulnerable consumers facing a large hit on their budgets. In addition, artificially suppressing utility bills would undercut incentives to reduce electricity use; this would lead to larger increases in prices for other energy products, since the use of other forms of energy would have to decline even more to meet the emissions cap. Finally, under most proposals to channel consumer relief through utility companies, the companies could use the funds for their business and corporate customers as well as for
