Dive Brief:
- Electric and natural gas utilities supplying federal government buildings across the nation will have to do so without pay during the ongoing partial shutdown of the federal government.
- The General Service Administration reminded utilities in a notice that their services are "excepted activities" that "allows an agency to incur an obligation for utility services/energy supply in the absence of appropriations."
Dive Insight:
The good news for utilities is that the government will pay for service delivered with a meter read end date of Sept. 30 or sooner. The bad news is that all utiltily service supplied after Oct. 1 is being provided on faith until the Congress passes a budget for Fiscal 2014. If the shutdown lasts long enough, quarterly earnings could take a hit. And during the shutdown, with a large number of federal workers on furlough and not in their buildings, power demand by the federal government has fallen.