The Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board’s recent move to block a government plan to reduce electricity rates has provincial politicians squabbling.

While the Liberal government had promised to ease energy bills by dropping a monthly energy efficiency charge, the board decided to keep the fees in place to help cover Nova Scotia Power’s rising fuel costs.

The decision, issued on Tuesday, means that $53 million in fees will remain in place, a move the board says will help protect Nova Scotia Power customers from a steep rate increase next year, when the utility would need to pay off about $100 million in fuel costs.

This has the reigning Liberals and the Opposition Tories at odds.

The Liberal government says the Utility and Review Board pulled the rug out from under its promise to reduce rates in 2015.

After days of discussing how disappointed they are with the board’s decision, cabinet ministers insist rates will come down – it’s just going to take more time.

“We committed that breaking the monopoly would put downward pressure and bring bills down over time; we still believe that to be the case,” Energy Minister Andrew Younger said on Thursday.

The Utility and Review Board says its ruling was made in an effort to protect consumers from $27 million in interest charges on Nova Scotia Power’s unpaid fuel bills, but Premier Stephen McNeil says the move was all wrong.

“First of all, we don't agree with the number; he was spreading it out over a much broader period of time … so the number’s fictitious,” McNeil said.

The Opposition says the Liberals simply made a promise they couldn’t keep.

PC leader Jamie Baillie says the interest rate calculations are not fictitious, and that the real problem is more fundamental.

“We have to stop the shell games about power and actually change the way that the power company is regulated in the first place if we're ever going to get real rate relief,” Baillie said.

Unlike the Liberals and PCs, the New Democrats are not calling for changes in the way Nova Scotia Power is regulated.

Instead, they say the long-term answer is to find a balance of environmentally-friendly power sources, such as Newfoundland’s Muskrat Falls project, and to wean society off fossil fuels.

But there is one thing the NDP and Tories appear to agree on.

“Minister Younger is full of baloney when he says that he was done in by the (UARB),” said NDP interim leader Maureen MacDonald.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Ron Shaw