Northern Plains members recently spoke with More Perfect Union shining a light on Montana’s broken utility system. NorthWestern Energy’s latest rate hike serves as a case study to explore how investor-owned utilities like NorthWestern are recklessly building expensive, polluting energy resources like the Laurel methane-fired plant to drive up shareholder profits at our expense.
The video explains how corporations like NorthWestern are incentivized to build the most expensive projects possible. Why? Because systemic failures in utility policy typically allow them to skim about 10% off the top of in pure profit for shareholders. The more they spend, the more profit they make. And we pay for it all.
As member Larry Bean says in the video, “Their primary concern is to make more money, and the only way for them to make more money is take it away from people like me.”
Thanks to people like Larry and fellow Northern Plains members who have been tirelessly organizing on this issue, this corrupt system is getting greater scrutiny.
Watch the full video below
