Sustainability Now! | PPL Shareholders For Energy Democracy | May 17, 2021

This week on Sustainability Now!, your host, Justin Mog, speaks some truth to POWER with three guests from PPL Shareholders for Energy Democracy. Wallace McMullen, Deborah Novgarodoff, and Kimberly Brown are all part of a group of concerned citizens and shareholders believes:
- LG&E/KU should financially support the community, especially those struggling financially. 
- LG&E should fund community development in Louisville’s West end, and
- LG&E should provide vigorous residential efficiency programs which target low-income and minority residents.
- LG&E/KU should not ask for punishing rate increases on residential and small business customers. 
- LG&E should stop asking for mandatory connection fees that are ridiculously high. $1.30 per day (for gas and electricity) is about 4 times too high.*  This charge should only cover the cost of sending the monthly bills. Similar argument for KU wanting $18.50/month for just the mandatory electric connection.   *[They got $1.10 per day in the rate case settlement]
- LG&E/KU should stop trying for really high profits that exploit its customers,  i.e., an unusually high guaranteed ‘rate of return’ on it’s operations. (10.0%).  The company should financially support the customers’ communities, and price its services accordingly.
- LG&E should stop trying to charge us for ‘smart meters’, both gas and electric.  We customers don’t need and don’t want that $400 million charge for new meters, especially given that the existing meters are expected to work well for another 10 years.
- LG&E/KU should accept Net Metering as it currently operates in Kentucky, and stop trying to devalue it.
- LG&E/KU should stop spending big dollars lobbying for policies that hurt its customers, e.g., the SB100 attack on net metering.
- LG&E should end its Bernheim/Jim Beam pipeline proposal in Bullitt County. Instead, Jim Beam should electrify and operate with large solar installations.  At the least, pipeline should be rerouted to a mutually agree route that lets landowners keep their generational farms, allows the proposed large-scale solar installation, keeps the environmental covenant on the Bernheim Forest land, and does not go through the Bernheim Forest.
- LG&E should stop dominating GLI to it’s own benefit.
- LG&E’s Solar$hare is a rip-off

Together they will be raising some pointed questions at the holding company, PPL’s annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday, May 18th!

As always, our feature is followed by your community action calendar for the week, so get your calendars out and get ready to take action for sustainability NOW!

Sustainability Now! airs on Forward Radio, 106.5fm, WFMP-LP Louisville, every Monday at 6pm and repeats Tuesdays at 12am and 10am. Find us at http://forwardradio.org

The music in this podcast is courtesy of the local band Appalatin and is used by permission. Explore their delightful music at http://appalatin.com