The former system doesn’t produce “liveable” wages for workers, it requires workers to borrow money to meet their financial obligations. The latter system favors localism and places a higher value on sustainable living.

When the PUC requires each public utility to project their “needs” out to a 75-year horizon — but when the utility company assumes it must perpetually “grow” — it invests in a distribution network to service a Sprawl-scenario pattern of settlement. Regardless of how Idaho Power proposes to push more of its operational costs to its rate payers (today), if it assumes the Treasure Valley population will top 1M people 75 years from now — it has embraced a growth-centric model for its business plan.

Interestingly, several years ago when the Ada County communities asked Idaho Power to project its costs based on a more tightly concentrated, and more sustainable, land use model — they found that the infrastructure costs for the SMALLER power distribution system would be higher than the Sprawl scenario. This was due to the past few decades of investment the company has already made, based on a perpetual growth land use scenario. The company has already purchased the land for the Sprawl-scenarios’ substations and distribution network. Re-tooling today’s network to string new conductors through existing conduit (or digging up existing pipe in roadways) and upgrading existing substations turns out to more expensive than simply kicking the can down the road and letting communities approve subdivisions left & right.

I’m not entirely convinced that a shift of corporate debt to prospective rate payers falls more into the category of discouraging growth — or if it’s just greed disguised as an attempt to “control” costs.

Add to this are costs to ship goods to markets and make a profit for owners and shareholders.