Texas Winter Storm Uri Gas Securitization

To recover the company’s extraordinary natural gas costs incurred during Winter Storm Uri and provide Texas natural gas customers with rate relief, CenterPoint Energy has filed an application with the Railroad Commission of Texas to securitize the costs pursuant to H.B. 1520. H.B. 1520 allows natural gas utilities to request Commission’s approval for the Texas Public Finance Authority to issue Customer Rate Relief (CRR) bonds to recover natural gas costs from Winter Storm Uri. The use of securitization financing is expected to provide the most cost effective and affordable method of recovering these costs and would benefit the company’s more than 1.8 million residential and business natural gas customers in Texas. If securitization financing is approved, natural gas customer bills would begin to reflect the recovery of Winter Storm Uri costs upon the issuance of CRR bonds, which is expected in 2022.