By: John Chilibeck, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Source: The Daily Gleaner

October 2, 2025

Transmission lines near the Point Lepreau generating station. Photo: Number Six (bill lapp), Wikimedia Commons

NB Power is seeking a 4.75 per cent hike to electricity rates next year for all its customers, a move that would add a little over $130 annually to the average residential bill alone.

In filings to the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board on Wednesday, NB Power seeks permission for the big rate hike next April following three punishing years of even higher increases.

And the financial pain for residential and business consumers could get even worse in the years ahead.

A three-year plan put forth by the public utility to the independent regulator suggests that in 2027, NB Power will seek a 6.5 per cent hike, and in 2028 another 6.5 per cent increase for its 393,000 customers.

“What I want customers to know is we will do everything we can to minimize that rate increase,” NB Power CEO and President Lori Clark told reporters in Fredericton about the potential hikes of 6.5 per cent.

Using a chart, the executive showed that since 2011, the annual rate hikes had been “very low. In fact, lower than the consumer price index, lower than inflation, and as a result, we’re at a place where we need to make infrastructure investments in our system.

“We always try to keep rates low and it’s always a last resort before we raise rates for customers, but we are at a place where in order to continue to provide secure, safe and reliable electricity for New Brunswickers now and into the future, we need to deal with the infrastructure deficit that we have and the new assets we need to bring onto the system to deal with the increasing load in the province.”

Public backlash

The last time that NB Power applied for and received higher rates from the independent regulator, it fuelled a public backlash.

Over the last three years, NB Power has hiked rates on average by 5.68 per cent (2023), 9.14 per cent (2024) and 9.14 per cent (2025). That 24 per cent increase was much more than inflation in New Brunswick leading up to those years of closer to 13 per cent.

This year’s April 1 rate hike alone will cost the average residential customer about $244 more annually.

But Clark argued that NB Power was suffering from years of provincial government meddling in the rate setting process, forcing freezes or limits to price increases, when costs were steadily going up.

The chart she had showed that over the last 15 years, NB Power either was forced by the provincial government to keep rates artificially low or was routinely told by the regulator it couldn’t have exactly what the utility wanted.

It resulted in an average annual rate increase of 1.35 per cent over the first 12 years, lower than the annual inflation rate over the period of 2.2 per cent.

She said the insufficient rate increases meant NB Power couldn’t pay off about $1.5 billion in debt.

Competitive rates

NB Power executives insist local rates remain competitive with neighbouring provinces, other than hydro-rich Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, and point out that many places in Canada have recently asked for rate increases higher than 4.75 per cent.

Anti-poverty critics, such as the Human Development Council, say this overlooks the fact that the sting of bills is felt greater in New Brunswick because so many consumers depend on electric baseboard heating, and their incomes are relatively lower.

Energy Minister René Legacy released a statement to the media on Wednesday about the proposed rate hike, which still needs to be examined in detail by the regulator before it’s approved.

The board is expected to hold public hearings in early 2026, with a decision sometime before April 1, when bills would rise.

“NB Power’s rate application to New Brunswick’s Energy and Utilities Board is a normal process for the utility,” he said. “It is an opportunity for customers, industry, and others to participate and offer feedback. Government will be following the proceedings as they unfold over the months ahead.”

Political reaction

Other politicians were more willing to assign blame.

Kris Austin, the energy critic for the Progressive Conservatives, the biggest opposition party in the house, pointed the finger at the Liberal government.

“New Brunswickers who are already strapped and struggling are asking where and when this will end,” he wrote in an email. “What we have heard is more and more rate hikes are coming. The government has a few months left on their NB Power review exercise but what we have learned so far does not sound encouraging for ratepayers.”

Green leader David Coon. Photo: Warktimes

David Coon, leader of the small opposition Green party, said NB Power’s fiscal woes stemmed from the Point Lepreau nuclear station, whose refurbishment in 2012 went more than $1-billion overbudget and has been plagued with breakdowns, making it one of the poorest performing plants of its kind in North America.

Before the refurbishment, the regulator warned that a revamp of Point Lepreau would create too much cost uncertainty, a recommendation the provincial government ignored.

When working, Lepreau provides a huge amount of baseload power – about one-fifth of NB Power’s total generation. NB Power just signed a support services agreement with Ontario Power Generation, which runs Canada’s biggest nuclear fleet, on Sept. 1 for $26 million, with the aim of improving the plant’s performance.

“The higher rates speaks to the unreliability of the nuclear plant,” Coon told Brunswick News in an interview. “It’s been down for quite awhile again, and the cost of repairs keeps driving up to keep it running. That’s been what’s driving the increase in power rates.”

Lepreau was down much of last year, a chunk of it unplanned, and is under a planned maintenance shutdown right now, about 80 days into a 140-day outage.

Coon argued that NB Power should wean itself off of Point Lepreau and plan to replace it with wind energy, backed up by massive batteries, and integrated with neighbouring utilities, such as Hydro- Québec.

“The onus is on the premier to significantly increase the energy efficiency budget and implement the solar retrofit program they’ve been promising,” the leader said, referring to Liberal Premier Susan Holt. “It would help ratepayers get their overall costs down in the face of increasing rates.”

Energy efficiency

NB Power plans to spend $51 million this year on energy efficiency programs, that, combined with provincial and federal programs, will be worth about $170 million. It’s supposed to help about 35,000 customers find savings.

But Coon said that was hardly enough, pointing out that next door, far more was being spent by Efficiency Nova Scotia.

Smart meter. Photo: NB Power

Rate hikes over the last two years took place while the public utility installed smart meters, a process that’s expected to wrap up by the end of this year, at a cost of more than $100 million.

For people who don’t like advanced meters, as they are called, NB Power is offering to keep them on traditional meters, but at a cost: It is proposing an opt-out fee of $4.65 a month, basically the cost of sending meter readers to a customer’s door every second month. This change too must be approved by the regulator before it goes ahead.

And for people who want clean energy, NB Power wants to offer a net-zero rate that will be about 15 per cent higher than regular rates, what the utility estimates is the cost of providing wind energy that’s already on the grid. If too many customers ask for the green rate, it will be capped at the amount of electricity being produced by non-polluting sources.

NB Power says there are several pressures forcing it to spend more.

“With aging infrastructure, increased demand for electricity, stronger weather systems due to climate change, and a government-mandated transition to net-zero, rate increases continue to be necessary,” states its rate application to the board.

Gas/diesel plant on Isthmus

To keep up with demand, NB Power wants to build more hydro lines and replace aging ones from the 1960s and 1970s, construct a natural gas-diesel plant near Sackville, convert the Belledune Generating Station from coal to wood pellets, refurbish the Mactaquac Generating Station near Fredericton, and make more repairs and upgrades to Point Lepreau.

It even wants to increase spending on tree trimming to reduce the number of branches that take out power lines and cause outages, up from $17 million this year to $25 million next year.

Overall, it plans on ramping up capital spending for big projects from around $600 million a year to $1.1 billion this year, with spending of $1.5 billion in subsequent years.

But it also plans to find nearly $29 million in operational savings next year.

Meanwhile, the monopoly electrical provider is under pressure to reduce its net debt, which, according to the latest quarterly report, stood at close to $5.7 billion as of June 30.

This story from Brunswick News was written by Local Journalism Initiative Reporter John Chilibeck.