In previous posts, we have talked about publicly available data on inflationary measures including the Consumer Price Index and the Construction Cost Index as well as on commercial energy use from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the US Census.  The US Census also has a rich set of data … Read more

David Tucker is a Project Director at the Environmental Finance Center at UNC Chapel Hill. How affordable are electric rates for “average” or “typical” residential customers in North Carolina? That is a complicated question to answer, and this article represents … Read more

Shadi Eskaf is a Senior Project Director for the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Our research shows that water rates have been rising faster than CPI inflation in the past few years for hundreds … Read more

Glenn Barnes is senior project director with the Environmental Finance Center based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He is the co-director of the Smart Management for Small Water Systems Project. For the past year, the Environmental … Read more

Jeff Hughes is a Faculty member at the UNC School of Government and the Director of the UNC Environmental Finance Center. Jeff is also the Principal Investigator for the Water Research Foundation’s “Defining a Resilient Business Model” Project (#4366). Conventional … Read more

Shadi Eskaf is a senior project director for the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “What is the [national/state/recommended] threshold of affordable rates? Is it 2.5 percent MHI?” If I had a dollar for … Read more

Stacey Isaac Berahzer is a Senior Project Director for the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina, and works from a satellite office in Georgia. Water prices are rising faster than any other utility service nationally. Of course, there … Read more