Friends,

I want to talk with you about the positive vision for the electricity system we need in this moment of crisis, which starts with public power and ends with an infrastructure designed around care not extraction.

Something i say frequently is that public power is necessary but it is not sufficient to answer the entwined ecological and economic crises together. Swapping the owner of our current utility business model from investors to the state is the beginning of the change we need, and alongside it we must address the underlying tension of the green transition: it is expensive, with electricity bills skyrocketing every month and no end in sight, while most Americans can't afford a $1,000 emergency expense.

As organizers in the public power movement, we have an important duty to advance a solution that can address multiple needs at once: increasing democratic control of the economy, increasing renewables and fossil-free energy on the grid, and eliminating energy poverty. The last one is more urgent than ever, and we must begin to address it this summer.

Currently 1 in 6 households in the U.S. can’t afford their electric bills. The current government threw the only federal program that helped people pay their bills into chaos in April. We predicted this in our last newsletter, and new leaks from the Office of Management and Budget show the Republican administration plans to eliminate the LIHEAP program entirely.

Now, we are on the precipice of the Summer of Shutoffs. For the Climate and Community Institute, i wrote a short blog with their Energy and Industrial Program Manager, Winston Yau, who i met through his work on WePower D.C. We wrote:

A patchwork of policy measures are in place to create checks and balances with the private utility companies, but only 21 states have enacted a ban on utility shutoffs in heatwaves, which cause thousands of deaths... To prevent mass death during the summer of shutoffs, every state should bring back these measures to provide electricity as a public good.

Public power has some of the lowest electricity rates in the country. Expanding public ownership can bring down the costs of utility bills everywhere, by eliminating the profit margins that for-profit utilities accumulate and by accessing lower-cost equity and debt.

This summer, locally-owned and democratically-controlled public power utilities are going to be faced with similar stresses to their for-profit counterparts, but their outcomes won’t be as severe because of electricity prices alone... In 42 states, public power has the lowest average bill or the lowest average electricity rate compared to all other forms of electric utility provider.

However, if we won public power everywhere tomorrow, endemic economic inequality in the United States would still exist.

Our challenge is to expand our movement until we win, and we have our best shot at this in the presence of widespread inequality by building a positive vison of the world we want to see, not simply one in opposition to the existing investor-owned utilities.

This looks like creating principled solidarity across movements to build an economy centered on care. For energy utilities, that means guaranteeing everyone has community-owned, locally controlled, renewable and fossil-free electricity in order to survive the climate crisis. Public power and electricity for all.

Creating new connections for public power

With collaborators from Temple University, Arizona State University, and the University of Toronto, i represented Public Grids as a co-organizer at the annual meeting of the American Assocation of Geographers in March! We constructed a four-part series titled "Energy utilities in a just transition" [AAG membership required] that focused on questions of governance, the relationship and transitions between forms of ownership, and more. The research presented by geographers, historians, lawyers, and other interdisicplinary and social scientists from the U.S. and Canada showed tremendous opportunities for collaboration betwen activists and scholars.

At the University of Southern Maine, i shared a vision for labor and community leadership in the public power movement - grounded in principles of economic democracy - at the Scontras Labor Center's Just Transition Summit. I was honored to be a guest alongside Mireille Bejjani of Slingshot Action and the Fix the Grid campaign in Masschusetts; Jeremy Brecher, labor historian and author of The Green New Deal from Below; Cynthia Phinney, President of Maine AFL-CIO; and Camilo Viveiros, Executive Director of The George Wiley Center in Rhode Island. As noted in our 2023 State of the Movement report, building the climate-labor movement’s support for public power is a key area we must address collectively.

Announcing our advisory board

With careful consideration about the needs for the public power movement in these times, i've asked a experienced group of leaders and thinkers to serve as inaugural advisors to Public Grids. They share a deep commitment to the ideas of energy democracy and public power and a strong desire to see intersectional movements for justice succeed in our lifetimes.

Collectively, the advisory board’s breadth and depth of knowledge, diversity of perspectives, and creativity will support Public Grids and the wider movement ecosystem we serve over the next two years. I'm very pleased and honored to share the announcement of our advisory board members, who will serve a two-year term:

• Carmelita Miller, Director of Energy Equity at RMI

• Deb Chachra, Professor at Olin College of Engineering

• Grace Brown, Research Associate at University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School

• Jacqueline Patterson, Founder and Executive Director at The Chisholm Legacy Project

• Johanna Bozuwa, Executive Director at Climate and Community Institute

• Sandeep Vaheesan, Legal Director at Open Markets Institute

Public power in the media

• Study finds public power in Tucson is feasible; TEP disagrees by Natalie Robbins, Tucson Sentinel

• Even Under Trump, Americans Can Fight Climate Change by Sandeep Vaheesan, The American Prospect

• Taking the power back: How the publicly-owned utility model could impact nationwide transmission buildout by Rachel Levine, Niskanen Center

• How Can The Left Tackle the Climate Crisis? by Chris Mills Rodrigo, Inequality,org, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies

Public power inspiration and education

(from shorter to longer!)

• Why Protests Should Be Promises by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, TIME

• Hail to the Pencil Pusher by Mike Konczal, Boston Review

• The Climate Movement Should Become a Human Movement by Rhiana Gunn-Wright and Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Hammer & Hope

• The rural N.C. mayor betting big on clean energy to uplift his hometown by Elizabeth Ouzts, Canary Media

• 7 Big Questions for Democratic & Progressive Donors by Movement Voter Project

• We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. by James O’Donnell and Casey Crownhart, MIT Technology Review

• NEW REPORT: Getting off Gas: Improving Fossil Gas Regulation Now for a Post-fossil Fuel Future by Salma Elmallah, Zachary Goldberg, and Patrick Bigger, Climate and Community Institute

• NEW BOOK: Organize or Burn by Fabian Holt, NYU Press

---

Thank you for signing up for our newsletter. Organizing together is what it’s going to take to win, and every action you take matters. Can you share this right now with ✨five✨ of your friends and colleagues in the climate justice fight? Encourage them to sign up for the next update from Public Grids!

Public Grids and our movement partners across the country are ready for investment that secures our movement’s power, capacity, and resiliency for the years ahead. If you want to make a gift, no matter how large or small, please email us today.

With gratitude and solidarity,

isaac sevier