Utility companies owned by the cities they serve.
Municipal electric utilities serve thousands of communities across the country. Public utility customers experience fewer and shorter outages, pay lower rates, and have more say than private utility customers. If the customers of an investor-owned utility are unhappy with its service, a local government can take over the utility and serve residents itself through a process called municipalization. Win or lose, municipalization fights can give communities greater voice and more leverage over their electric utility in vital areas like sustainability.
ILSR’s six part podcast series, called The Promise and Peril of Publicly-Owned Power, responds to an uptick of interest in city-owned electric utilities. The episodes explore the benefits of public ownership, how to successfully take over, the silver linings of failed municipalization campaigns, and limitations of the public power model.
Listen to the Series
Gregory Woodring discusses the ways that investor-owned utility DTE Energy has failed Ann Arbor customers and how the city could take over and provide better...
Dorrie Bruggemann and Bill Powers discuss how a publicly-owned San Diego electric utility would be more supportive of distributed solar, offer lower rates thanks to...
Lucy Hochschartner explains how public power would have been an improvement over Maine’s investor-owned utilities, yet didn’t receive the support of Maine voters on November...
Randy Knight explains how the Winter Park, Fla., overcame utility opposition to create a publicly-owned electric utility and shares his advice to other cities. Portions...
