A special series of the Local Energy Rules podcast focused on public power; utility companies owned by the cities they serve.
On the Local Energy Rules Podcast, we share stories of monopoly power, energy democracy, and how communities can take charge to transform the energy system.
This special series, called The Promise and Peril of Publicly-Owned Power, responds to an upswell of interest in city-owned utilities. In addition to clean energy, advocates cite local control, lowering costs, and reinvestment in the local economy among the major reasons they want public, instead of private, power companies.
Community leaders in six different municipalization campaigns explain why a city might attempt to take over its electric utility.
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Ursula Schryver describes the benefits of consumer-owned utility service and Randy Knight reports on the progress that municipalization brought to Winter Park, Fla.
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John Coyle describes how to form a publicly-owned utility and lists the four ingredients for baking up a public takeover.
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John Farrell describes three municipalization attempts: Boulder, Minneapolis, and Decorah. Each city failed to form its own utility, but found silver linings in trying.
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Customers of four publicly-owned utilities explain some limitations of the public power model and how they are organizing to increase accountability.
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John Farrell explains five alternatives to a public power takeover that can still advance a community’s clean energy and environmental justice aims.
Listen to the episodeThe Promise and Peril of Publicly-Owned Power features clips from many episodes on public power in the Local Energy Rules archive.
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...