Decision on Pepco-Exelon Merger to be Announced Today

Heather Curtis
WMAL.com

WASHINGTON – The fate of the Pepco-Exelon merger will be decided Friday by D.C.’s Public Service Commission.

The merger has already been approved by other states, including Maryland and Virginia. Despite those approvals, Pepco spokesman Vincent Morris said the deal can’t move forward without also getting the green light from the District.

D.C. regulators are deciding whether a merger agreement re-negotiated between the utilities and Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office meets the criteria for approval. Bowser opposed the original deal, which the commission rejected in August.

The Community Power Network’s Ben Delman said that deal was rejected due to a conflict of interest. He explained Exelon, unlike Pepco, gets more than half its revenue from the power plants it owns. Pepco makes all of its money from selling energy.

“It’s in Pepco’s interest just to sell as much electricity as they can, whereas Exelon has an interest in making sure that the price of that electricity, because they own generation, is higher,” Delman said.

Delman said the new deal does not to resolve that problem and would result in higher energy prices for consumers.

Mike Tidwell, Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network alleges Bowser only changed her mind on the deal after Pepco agreed to invest in a major D.C. development deal.

“There are a lot of questions surrounding the pay-to-play arrangement between Pepco and the mayor’s office to transfer 25 million dollars from Pepco to the mayor for vague naming rights of the new soccer stadium,” said Tidwell.

While opponents of the merger argue the merger would be bad for consumers, the utility companies said it would actually benefit them.

“We think that because the agreement that we’ve signed with Exelon includes money for low income ratepayers, includes money to increase reliability and resiliency so that we’re less likely to have outages and if we do that they are shorter,” said Morris.

If the commission approves the merger Friday, Tidwell said the battle to stop it won’t end.

He believes the new deal is illegal because Pepco gave D.C. money for the soccer stadium as part of it, while neither utility gave anything to the other states involved. He feels this could prompt an investigation by the attorney general.

Copyright 2016 by WMAL.com. All Rights Reserved. (PHOTO: Facebook/Chesapeake Climate Action Network)