Despite the challenging state of affairs in 2020, it’s been a productive year for ILSR and for our work fighting corporate control and building local power across the economy. Our 2020 Annual Report outlines some of the progress we’ve made this year.… Read More
Our research has found that cities, counties, states, and community organizations have established more than 800 programs to provide financial assistance to small businesses in the wake of the pandemic. These programs have deployed more than $9.27 billion in grants and loans. Yet the funds are running out. Congress should address the unprecedented crisis facing small business by quickly providing the resources local governments need to do this important work.… Read More
This report explores water main geothermal: a novel, affordable way to decarbonize home heating and air conditioning using existing city water mains.… Read More
The third edition of this report asks yet again: if each U.S. state took full advantage of its own renewable energy resources, would it be sufficient to satisfy that state’s electricity consumption? The answer for most states is yes, easily.… Read More
This 2020 update to a 2016 report finds that while new technology has made electricity demand response simple and cost-effective, and has opened the opportunity for residential savings, utility implementation of demand response programs is lagging.… Read More
This report investigates broadband competition in communities across the country.… Read More
ILSR’s latest report describes 26 actions that community leaders — including local governments, local business groups, nonprofit organizations, business improvement districts, and other entities — can adopt to help small businesses weather the crisis. … Read More
Amazon’s dominance of online retail means that hundreds of thousands of small businesses must rely on its site to reach customers. In this report, we find that Amazon is exploiting its gatekeeper power to extract a growing cut of the revenue earned by these sellers. It’s doing this by imposing ever-larger fees on them. This tactic is often dooming their businesses. It’s also enabling Amazon to entrench its monopoly grip on e-commerce, while expanding its dominance into logistics and advertising.… Read More
This report explores the undercounting of customer-sited and non-utility solar in utility distributed resource forecasting. It finds that Xcel Energy’s forecasts for distributed solar in Minnesota are strikingly low.… Read More
