Website Providing Electricity Purchase Options Offered Fewer Choices For Spanish-speakers

texas powerlines

subscribe

DALLAS -

The state’s Public Utility Commission has ordered that the Spanish-language version of the Power to Choose website provide the same options available on the English version of the site.

Texas is one of a handful of states with a deregulated electricity market. The ides is to give consumers the option to pick power plans that they think best fit their needs. Customers can find available plans on the state’s Power To Choose website, or its Spanish-language counterpart, Poder de Escoger. In theory, those two sites should have the exact same offerings, so no one is disadvantaged. But the Texas Public Utility Commission found that wasn’t the case.

Houston Chronicle business reporter Lynn Sixel has been covering this story. She says the Power to Choose website is important for consumers facing the difficult task` of choosing an electric provider in a deregulated state.

“There are about 57 providers listed on the [English] Power to Choose website. [Last week] there were only 23 plans on the Spanish Power to Choose site,” Sixel says. “If you speak Spanish and you’re looking for a low-cost plan, as of last week, it would have been difficult to find some of the really great offers.”

Mustafa Tameez, managing director of Outreach Strategists, a Houston firm that consults with companies and nonprofits on diversity, described this issue as a type of redlining.

“He’s referring to a practice that banks would use to circle areas on maps in which the bank decided they did not want to lend money or would charge higher rates,” Sixel says. “Typically it was poor minority neighborhoods. Those folks would not get the same great deals that their Anglo neighbors would get.”

DeAnn Walker, chairman of the Public Utility Commission, said she was not at all happy about the plans listings in a meeting Friday.

“She gave a deadline of 8 a.m. Monday morning for any providers who wanted to put their plans on the Power to Choose website, must put them on both the Spanish language and the English language versions,” Sixel says. “All the folks that I talked to really had no idea that there were different plans on both sites and I think that there was sort of an assumption.”

Related News

justin trudeau

Trudeau vows to regulate oil and gas emissions, electric car sales

TORONTO - Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau vowed to regulate total emissions from Canada’s oil and gas producers as he laid out his first major climate change promises of the campaign Sunday, a plan that was welcomed by several environmental and climate organizations.

Trudeau said that if re-elected, the Liberals will set out regulated five-year targets for emissions from oil and gas production to get them to net-zero emissions by 2050, but also create a $2 billion fund to create jobs in oil and gas-reliant communities in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador.

“Let’s be realistic, over a quarter of Canada’s emissions come…

READ MORE
heathrow-airport-power-outage-vulnerabilities-flagged-days-before-disruption

Heathrow Airport Power Outage: Vulnerabilities Flagged Days Before Disruption

READ MORE

bulgaria korea nuclear

KHNP is being considered for Bulgarian Nuclear Power Plant Project

READ MORE

doe logo

US Dept. of Energy awards Washington state $23.4 million to strengthen infrastructure

READ MORE

kenya nuclear program

Kenya on Course for $5 Billion Nuclear Plant to Power Industry

READ MORE