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Below are the monthly updates from the most current June 2021 fuel price data (GasBuddy.com) and April 2021 electricity and natural gas price data (US Energy Information Administration). To view additional data and analysis related to the California economy visit our website at www.centerforjobs.org/ca.
Continuing the trends indicated in prior reports, energy prices rose across all sources, keeping energy costs for households and the state’s employers at or near the top for the nation. While the state’s policies remain focused on equitable recovery, state actions as reflected in the regulations driving up these basic costs of living undermine the ability of many households, especially lower income but increasingly middle income as well to move ahead economically. Wage and income gains for many continue to be outmatched by the rise in daily costs.
Equity is not a new concern. One of the underlying tenets of the New Deal during the Great Depression was to recover but also expand prosperity to those parts of the nation that had been left behind, and central to this effort was rural electrification and other energy-based economic development efforts such as the Tennessee Valley Authority. The concept of affordable and reliable energy was considered a predicate to economic progress. California through state actions now appears to be reversing course on these goals, targeting energy policies to the higher income coastal areas that can afford these costs and putting many in the lower income regions further inland increasingly at risk to energy cost-driven poverty.
The rise in electricity costs has been so steep that a recent UC Berkeley study reported that in parts of California, the cost per mile of driving an electric vehicle is now more expensive that a reasonably fuel-efficient gasoline vehicle. The outcomes of the energy policies not only undermine the state’s fundamental economic goals; they are also beginning to work at cross purposes to themselves.
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