Testimony of Mark Rodeffer
Sierra Club District of Columbia Chapter
Oversight Hearing on the Public Service Commission
Committee on Transportation and the Environment
Friday, February 27, 2026
Councilmember Allen, thank you for holding this hearing today and for taking on oversight of utility regulation. I’m Mark Rodeffer, and I’m testifying for the Sierra Club. We are America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters, including 7,000 DC residents. We are proud members of the Fair Budget Coalition.
The theme of my testimony today is failed leadership on utility regulation and oversight in the District. The regulators have failed, and the legislators have failed. Hopefully that failure will end, starting today with this hearing.
Failed leadership at the DC Council
For more than a decade, the commission has had minimal legislative oversight. I have attended PSC oversight committee hearings since 2019, and I’ve watched as the commission chairman was asked softball questions. When former councilmember Kenyan McDuffie was responsible for oversight of the PSC, he provided none. He never meaningfully challenged the commissioners on the skyrocketing utility rates that they rubber-stamped. Nor did he ask about the commission’s failure to meet its statutory obligations to implement DC’s climate commitments.
Councilmember Allen, I hope you will demand real accountability from the commission and ask the hard questions to which ratepayers deserve answers. We urge you to scrutinize the decisions that have driven up utility bills and insist the PSC comply with its obligations to protect consumers and implement DC’s climate commitments.
Failed leadership at the Public Service Commission
For years, a majority at the Public Service Commission has sided with utilities over ratepayers. They have approved massive rate increases, even retroactively; allowed utilities to withhold information from the public; and forced DC residents to waste money on the fossil fuel infrastructure we’ve committed to transition away from. Instead of protecting consumers, the commission has enabled skyrocketing bills and doubled down on fossil fuel infrastructure.
Electricity prices doubled as the commission rubber-stamped rate hikes
From 2020 to 2025, DC electricity prices increased 93%, the highest in the nation. California also had sky-high rate increases, with prices up 62% over the same period. In California, utility equipment has sparked devastating wildfires. As a result, the utilities are spending billions on grid hardening to prevent fires, a cost paid by ratepayers and resulting in higher bills. DC has nothing like that, yet our electric prices are up 50% more than California’s.
DC electricity prices have skyrocketed because our regulators have allowed repeated and large rate increases with practically no oversight. The Public Service Commission in 2024 awarded Pepco an unprecedented $123 million rate increase in a multi-year rate scheme that will cost the average DC resident almost $150 this year. In that 2-1 decision, the commission allowed Pepco to retroactively raise its rates for 2024, locking in even higher rates going forward.
It’s not clear what exactly the 2024 rate increase is paying for. In the words of the dissenting commissioner: “The majority’s decision to approve a rate increase first and conduct a prudency review afterwards means that there is currently no meaningful determination of Pepco’s revenue requirement or final statement on whether this rate is in the public interest.” The two commissioners who voted for this rate increase abdicated the core responsibility of utility regulators to evaluate utility proposals and determine what costs are prudent and should be shouldered by ratepayers. The dissent in the case called this a “backwards approach to ratemaking” and “a regulatory trainwreck that unreasonably promotes Pepco’s interest at the expense of ratepayers.” The dissent stated that the majority’s rationale for allowing the rate hike “could be summarized as ‘because Pepco said so.’”
Gas use is down but gas bills have doubled
The average DC resident uses 30% less gas today than in 2014, but gas charges have increased an average of 6% a year since then. With compound interest, that’s an increase of about 90%. DC residents are paying more for less because the commission has repeatedly allowed massive rate increases, not for the gas itself, but for the pipelines that deliver it.
With Project Pipes and the warmed-over version, now called District Safe, DC residents are paying far more for “delivery charges” than for gas. Twenty years ago, 59% of a gas bill paid for the gas and the rest was for the pipes to deliver it. But today, because of the commission’s poor decisions, only one-third of ratepayer bills are for gas and two-thirds are for wasteful pipeline spending. In short: DC residents are paying more for less because the commission has decided to allow Washington Gas to gouge its customers.
Are DC families paying the salaries of utility lobbyists?
Washington Gas is hiding whether it is using ratepayer funds to pay for its extensive, pricey, and deceptive lobbying activities. The commission compelled Washington Gas to provide an answer in a rate case, but the company refused. A reasonable person might expect the commission to deny a rate increase unless Washington Gas stated whether it was charging its customers for lobbying expenses. Instead, in a 2-1 vote, the commission allowed Washington Gas to keep the information secret and awarded the utility a 12% rate increase. This appears to meet the definition of a captured regulator.
Washington Gas business model must evolve
The corporate name of DC’s gas utility is WGL, which stands for Washington Gas Light. That’s because the company was founded in 1848 to extract gas from coal and burn it for lighting. In the last 177 years, the world, and Washington Gas, have evolved. Today we have efficient lighting from LED bulbs and WGL’s business is not light, despite the L in its name. It’s time for WGL to again evolve in a changing world and move its business from climate and air pollution to efficient heating from systems like heat pump networks powered by renewable energy.
Though Washington Gas is fighting attempts to provide heat from non-fossil fuel sources in DC, in Maryland it is required under the Working for Accessible Renewable Maryland Thermal Heat (WARMTH) Act to develop pilot programs for networked geothermal heating and cooling systems that do not use fossil fuels. The law, passed in 2024, requires all major Maryland utilities to build ground-source heat pump networks that provide efficient heating and cooling that can replace aging pipe infrastructure.
In Massachusetts, a neighborhood-scale utility-owned geothermal network was developed by the utility Eversource in partnership with the nonprofit HEET and local stakeholders. The project was completed in 2024 and today is operational, delivering heating and cooling to residents of Framingham, Massachusetts.
If Maryland and Massachusetts can start to move from fossil fuels to efficient heating, we can do it in DC too. Unfortunately, a majority on DC’s Public Service Commission has no vision beyond continuing business as usual. We should change that.
Should failed PSC leadership continue?
The two commissioners who have routinely rubber-stamped utility proposals for massive rate hikes and locking DC into fossil fuels for the long term are Chairman Emile Thompson and Commissioner Ted Trabue. Mayor Bowser has renominated both to serve another term on the Public Service Commission. If the Council wants another four years of skyrocketing utility bills, you should confirm Emile Thompson and Ted Trabue. If the DC Council wants a new direction at the Public Service Commission, new leadership is required.
The Sierra Club and I personally take no pleasure in opposing Ted Trabue’s nomination. I have known Ted for almost a decade and I like him. I met him when he headed the DC Sustainable Energy Utility, which does great work harnessing energy efficiency to make utility bills lower than they otherwise would have been. The Sierra Club worked with Ted and DCSEU to launch the Affordable Home Electrification Program. Ted Trabue has done excellent work. That’s why we supported his nomination four years ago. And Ted is a genuinely nice person. So I am sad that the Sierra Club is asking for the DC Council to vote against his confirmation. But unfortunately, his record of voting with Emile Thompson to raise utility bills and slow DC’s transition off fossil fuels leads us to oppose both nominations.