NYC Business Asks Customers For Help Paying Skyrocketing Energy Bills

An internet café in New York City is asking customers for donations to pay for skyrocketing electricity bills.

Bryan Calotta, who manages the Astoria Internet Café in Queens, New York, said he screamed “profusely” when he opened the envelope containing his energy bill for January, which showed a 26% increase over the prior month. The bill was for $702.51, Business Insider reported.

“At first I was like, ‘What is wrong? What happened?’” Calotta told the outlet. He said he checked the meters and confirmed they were working properly.

In order to help pay for the exorbitant bill, Calotta posted a sign asking for customers to donate to help cover the cost. The sign notes that, according to Calotta’s calculation, the bill reflects a 300% increase in per-kilowatt hour prices for supply and delivery charges, Insider reported.

Calotta’s café is not the only business experiencing higher energy bills from provider Con Edison. Greenpointers, a local outlet, reported earlier this month that numerous readers told them their energy bills had jumped precipitously since the prior month. State Senator Julia Salazar, a Democratic Socialist from Brooklyn, also posted that her energy bill had increased even though they hadn’t used “more power than previous two months.”

Salazar blamed the increase on corporate greed. Con Edison told Insider that the increase was due to rising gas prices:

The changes in customer bills in January were mainly due to the supply cost of the energy commodity. Natural gas is a driver of electricity costs as it is used by generation plants to create electricity. Con Edison does not make a profit on the commodity. We buy the energy on the wholesale market and provide it to customers at the same price we paid. Energy prices are volatile and can be affected by factors such as weather, demand, and economic trends.

Con Edison is taking action to address the increase in energy supply costs and its impact on our customers. We are reviewing all of our practices that affect customer supply costs, including our energy-buying practices, the tools we use to reduce supply price volatility, the way we communicate changes in supply prices, and our programs to help customers who have fallen behind on their bills.

The higher prices come at a time with record inflation and with oil prices approaching $100 a barrel, with President Joe Biden warning last week that the sanctions his administration placed on Russia would cause gas prices to rise.

“As we respond, my administration is using every tool at our disposal to protect American businesses and consumers from rising prices at the pump,” Biden said at the time, as The Daily Wire reported. “As I said last week, defending freedom will have costs for us as well, here at home. We need to be honest about that.”

“But as we will do — but as we do this, I’m going to take robust action and make sure the pain of our sanctions is targeted at the Russian economy, not ours,” Biden claimed. “We are closely monitoring energy supplies for any disruption. We’re executing a plan in coordination with major oil-producing consumers and producers toward a collective investment to secure stability and global energy supplies.”

Biden’s energy policy since taking office, however, has been to reverse many decisions that former President Donald Trump made that resulted in the lowest gas prices in recent memory.

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