ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – With temps still in the 90’s, a lot of us aren’t even close to turning off those A/C units. That means your electric bill could still be hurting your pocket book every month.

Now, there’s a chance your bill could be even higher. 

Nothing is official yet, but you may have already gotten a pamphlet in the mail from PNM.  

A spokesperson with the company says the pamphlets and other outreach methods like social media posts are to inform customers of a possible rate increase. But that doesn’t mean your bill is going up next month. 

According to a PNM spokesperson, the company filed a 2025 rate request with the New Mexico Public Regulations Commission. 

PNM says this is just the first step in a yearlong process. 

Any rate adjustment has to be approved through the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission. The commission will hold a public process to review the rate request and decide on a final rate adjustment. 

PNM says the proposed rate change will be applied over two phases in mid-2025 and January 2026. 

The average monthly increase is projected to be $11.12 a month and $12.48 per month in January 2026. 

KOB 4 asked PNM customers what they thought about this proposal. 

“Everything just keeps going up, everything, everything just keeps going up. We don’t need an increase in electricity. We just got an increase in water bill, so now electricity and next will be the gas bill,” said Betty Pena, a PNM customer.

PNM issued the following statement on the possible rate change and the process of getting it changed:

“We are committed to keeping customers informed of any potential rate changes as we work through this year-long process. We sent all customers notices of the rate request, posted the rate request on our social media channels and our customer website. Additionally, any rate adjustment requires approval from the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission which will hold a public process to review the rate request and determine a final rate.”

The company says it held off on rate increases through COVID-19 as long as it could. 

The last time PNM filed for a rate increase was 2022. For more information about the 2025 rate request, click here.

Hammer walks me over to a wall to the left of the front door—pointing to a graphic of technologies or companies that had their roots right there in New Mexico, but then moved elsewhere once they started to scale. Microsoft is the prominent example: Bill Gates and Paul Allen started building their first microcomputer in Albuquerque before they moved the company to Bellevue, Wash. so they could be closer to the West Coast’s talent pool.

“What we’re trying to do is continue a legacy here in New Mexico of bold ideas— imaginative people,” Hammer says. This time around—he’s hoping his team can convince founders to stay.

Roadrunner Venture Studios is the first venture studio spinoff of America’s Frontier Fund (AFF), the venture capital arm of the policy and education-focused non-profit that is funded by the likes of Mark Cuban, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. Roadrunner is the first of a series of studios AFF plans to scatter across the country, with the intention of helping scientists or researchers from national, university, or corporate laboratories get capital, recruiting help, and the resources they need to turn their work into viable commercial products. Behind it all is a mission to ensure that the U.S. continues to be dominant in innovation.

Albuquerque is where things will start—in part because of its proximity to Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Lab, the Air Force Research Lab, and the University of New Mexico. But also because the state’s sovereign wealth fund, the New Mexico State Investment Council, two weeks ago agreed to invest $50 million as an anchor check into Roadrunner’s first venture capital fund, approximately $20 million of which will go directly into Roadrunner itself. The sovereign wealth fund, which just started making venture capital investments a few years ago and has invested in deep tech-focused funds like Lux Capital, Playground Global, and Anzu Partners, has asked these funds in limited partner agreements to at least look at companies based in New Mexico. In the case of Roadrunner, it’s asking the studio to build companies in New Mexico. 

“I obviously wanted it to start here, and was willing to anchor the fund to make sure that occurred,” says Chris Cassidy, who oversees the private equity investments of New Mexico’s sovereign wealth fund.

The premise of Roadrunner is to bridge the gap—what Hammer calls the “valley of death”—between the technology being invented and funded in laboratories in New Mexico and elsewhere, and turning the projects into commercially viable companies. Right now, Roadrunner is working with labs like Nokia Bell Labs, the University of Michigan, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Roadrunner’s new general partner, Mike Mettler, who is joining Roadrunner as part of this new fund, was out at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California last week, Hammer says, meeting directly with scientists and assessing which ideas might be ready for company creation. Hammer is hoping to get various stakeholders on the same page, from local municipalities and state governments to other venture capital firms. He touts Hydrosonics, one of the studio’s first three companies, which is building electrolysis technologies to enable affordable hydrogen fuel. Hydrosonics’ founder, Dr. Luis Chavez, had been a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory before starting a company with Roadrunner last year. 

“We met Luis in one of our scouting trips,” Hammer says, explaining how Chavez moved to Albuquerque, set up shop here and within a year had raised approximately $875,000 in venture capital as well as non-dilutive funding from the Economic Development Department.

Gilman Louie, the CEO of America’s Frontier Fund who formerly ran the CIA-funded investment firm In-Q-Tel, says that Roadrunner Venture Studios is part of the investment side of AFF’s business, and that there is “no crossover” and “no financial interest” between its non-profit donors, including Schmidt, Thiel, or Cuban. “All of our philanthropy is kept separate from all of our for-profit activities,” he says, noting that Roadrunner will be squarely focused on working with scientists who need capital.

The problem with any kind of new studio or venture capital firm is that it can take a long time—sometimes a decade—to actually deliver meaningful results or returns. In the near term, SIC’s Cassidy will be monitoring how many companies and how much talent moves to Albuquerque as a result of Roadrunner and is hopeful that Albuquerque, with its renowned Christmas chile sauce and more affordable real estate, can have a startup scene that takes off—and sticks around—too.

“What we’re trying to do is build this center of gravity here,” Hammer says.

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(New Mexico News Connection) There’s evidence that respectful conversations about politics – while not changing hearts or minds – can lead to greater understanding on both sides. That’s the goal of New Mexico’s Braver Angels Alliance.

The local group is part of the larger national organization dedicated to political depolarization.

Albuquerque volunteer Pat Hirschl said often meetings cannot be held unless there’s both a red co-chair and a blue co-chair, to guarantee equal engagement about difficult topics.

“Locally we’ve had workshops, we’ve had skills training for bridging the divide in which you try to help people see how they can talk to their neighbors or their families,” said Hirschl. “There are families that are split apart by this division in the politics.”

Braver Angels takes its name from a speech by President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, when he encouraged both sides of the conflict to call on the “better angels” of their nature, rather than see each other as enemies.

Albuquerque’s group will host a meetup at the Cherry Hills library this Thursday at 4 p.m. for a structured conversation on the topic of politics.

Hirschl said the meetings are not designed to get either side to agree with the other, but to recognize why people think the way they do based on their life experiences.

Across the country and in crucial swing states, Hirschl noted that independent voters are expected to play an outsize role in this year, and said leaders of the major parties would be smart to take notice.

“If they have any sense at all, both parties will reach out to those people who are not members of their party,” said Hirschl. “So, we’ll see – a ver que pasa – we’ll see what happens.”

The program for this year’s Braver Angels national convention focused on four issues: abortion, economic inequality and growth, free speech versus hate speech, and immigration.

The nonprofit launched in 2016 and now has 120 chapters and some 12,000 members nationwide.

Support for this reporting was provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.