Affordability comes up everywhere, in every room where utilities meet and in front of every commission. The Affordability Benchmarking Task Force is where member utilities agree on what it means in operating terms, and build a common basis for comparing themselves against peers.
The industry does not lack affordability data. It lacks agreement on what the data means, and on which parts of it an operations leader can actually move. Every utility is answering the question separately, in front of a different commission, using a different definition.
The bill is a lagging indicator of operating decisions made three to ten years earlier. Associations publish prices, regulators set outcomes, and standards bodies define data models. None of them ties the bill back to the operating levers with utility numbers behind it. That is the layer this group works on.
The task force exists because members asked for it, and it is built by the members rather than for them. The utilities in the room define the measures; AEIC convenes and holds the pen.
Working members who live in the numbers rather than present them. Each call opens with short shares from two utilities, covering where they stand today, the mandates they answer to, the definitions they use, the actions underway, and the operating link. Then roundtable, against a draft AEIC brings to every call.
One hour each, chaired by a sponsoring executive. The rounds react to what the working calls produce and send it back with direction, and they shape a short companion piece for commissions, legislatures and customers on why the trajectory is what it is.
A version 1 affordability benchmarking framework the participating utilities are willing to put their names to: an agreed set of measures, each with a written definition and a named data source; a comparability basis, so a utility knows which peers it can honestly measure itself against; a separation of cost drivers into those an operator controls and those it does not; and a worked example each participant can run against its own numbers without publishing anything.
Version 1 is the first version, not the final one. The framework stays a living document, revisited as the landscape moves.
Each member utility is in front of its own commission with its own definition of affordability. This group is building the common basis, and member utilities are welcome to join it. One utility membership opens the task force and every other committee and program to your whole organization.
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