Hi everyone!

My name is Sylvia Chi, and I’m joining Public Grids as Senior Counsel. I’m excited to launch our new law and policy program this year to support the public power movement nationwide!

I bring over 15 years of experience in law and public policy, most recently serving as the Legal and Advocacy Director at Just Solutions and Policy Director at Asian Pacific Environmental Network. I helped launch the California Green New Deal Coalition, where i first started scheming with isaac about how to bring about a more just world! I also help lead the California Public Banking Alliance and wrote our nation-leading legislation, enacted in 2019, authorizing cities and counties to organize their own public banks.

Over the years, I’ve studied how poorly designed our electric system is and seen up close how ineffectively regulated utilities are all around the country. Working on climate and energy policy in California, especially around PG&E’s bankruptcy and the scores of people they killed, I clearly saw how the system is rigged against holding investor-owned utilities accountable.

At the same time, my work on public banking has shown me how alternative models for existing industries can grow and publicly-owned enterprises can become the norm, just as they are in other countries. I’m looking forward to building new connections and forums to exchange lessons between the public power and public banking movements globally, collectively building the political power and capacity for self-governance we need.

No doubt many of you are impacted and disheartened by the Trump regime’s most recent round of atrocities, especially the surge in violent attacks and kidnappings in Minnesota and Maine. As the daughter of immigrants, a so-called “anchor baby,” and a woman of color, I am too. I am frequently alternating between states of panic, anger, and grief these days, but I remain committed to practicing the discipline of hope for our future.

With Public Grids, I am so grateful to get to do that with all of you in envisioning and enacting a new system of clean, renewable, and accountable electricity systems for all.

Onward,

Sylvia

Overcharged: The Rules of the Electricity Affordability Crisis

The electricity affordability crisis didn’t happen spontaneously, it has a blueprint. For our first report, Overcharged: The Rules of the Affordability Crisis, we took a close look at available academic literature about the design of liberalized regulation and performance of private ownership. We think it’s fair to evaluate private ownership on its merits, so that’s what we did in partnership with the Climate and Community Institute.

We highlight key claims about the benefits of private ownership, competition, and utility restructuring, and finds that technocratic regulation has failed at delivering on its own promises:

• Foundational Bonbright principles of utility regulation specifically exclude affordability and societal inequality as a utility regulation priority, structurally designed to prioritize reliable profits to the private sector
• Competition for wholesale generation has not brought down prices but instead produced double marginalization (one profit margin for the utility and one for the wholesale power producer)
• Effects from restructuring changes like revenue decoupling are correlated to fluctuations in natural gas prices, not effective regulation design, and have increased bills in a majority of implementations
• All regulated rates of return on equity have risen significantly, always moving up with the actual cost of capital, never moving down proportionally
• Effects of performance-based regulation in the US have no evidence backing up those claims, and is incorrectly implemented so as to be impossible to produce change in a majority of states
• Retail competition has similarly failed, resulting in several billions of dollars of predatory overcharging in states like New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, and Massachusetts (since time of writing, Pennsylvania has been added to this list)

“At this critical time, we must invent new solutions and design for a responsible, economically sound, climate safe, racially just, and affordable utility system that can serve as the backbone of the decarbonized energy system.“

READ “OVERCHARGED: THE RULES OF THE ELECTRICITY AFFORDABILITY CRISIS”

Public power saves customers money

We know that public power is the most affordable choice for the future of the electricity system, and more people are catching on. Covering the public power movement in the Hudson Valley region, The New York Times reports, “replacing the utility, Central Hudson Gas & Electric, with a public authority [is] feasible and could result in customer savings within the first year of operation.”

It gets better. If the Hudson Valley Power Authority Act became law this year, by 2056, customers there would realize over $200 million in bill savings. That’s before any more work to accelerate the switch to renewables or wind down the utility’s costly gas system!

READ THE FULL FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS

We are inspired by the Hudson Valley for Public Power coalition’s multi-year record of success! Their leaders invited Public Grids to join them throughout the year-long process of designing, bidding out, and completing the feasibility study. Together we helped deliver a sound, independent analysis that shows the potential of public power at the utility level.

The scenario we commissioned includes taking over the entire service territory, eliminating separation fees and process; buying both the electric & gas utility together; and assembling a financing structure split between taxable and tax-free debt. For more information about the study’s modeling, check out the full feasibility analysis.

Public power can help rebuild our social fabric

In his article “Lightning in a Bottle” for The American Prospect, James Baratta traverses the utility landscape, and highlighted our report, “Overcharged: The Rules of the Affordability Crisis.”

THE INABILITY OF PUBLIC UTILITY COMMISSIONS to keep costs down for customers sits squarely at the center of the affordability crisis. It also reflects the failure of technocratic liberalization, which as Sevier observed in an October report he co-authored, “has failed at its core promise of increasing competition, without lowering costs for working people, stabilizing costs, making services more reliable, increasing energy conservation, reducing private utility opposition to rooftop solar, and slowing upward wealth redistribution.”

READ ABOUT PUBLIC POWER IN THE AMERICAN PROSPECT

For The American Prospect, we offered a new vision for the electricity system, grounded in public power, that can tackle the thorny issues of affordability, climate, and democracy.

“The electricity system connects all of us to one another in the country, no matter who you are or where you live, which makes it an incredible site for building back our relationships and our social fabric,” Sevier said. “We have to rebuild trust and to demonstrate that our infrastructure can serve a public good, not a private profit.”

We must fund our own movements

In our last newsletter, one of our volunteer leaders asked you to join our grassroots campaign to grow our movement’s power, and you all came through in a huge way. THANK YOU! We raised over $11,500 in less than one month with their leadership and your support!

As Bridget said, “we’re building a foundation of ordinary people to take action, fight back, and power our movement for public power” and we will keep going this year as the urgency of our work rises with every utility failure, every heatwave, and every blackout.

Will you join us in building the public power movement today with a monthly donation?

Public power in the media

• Lightning in a Bottle by James Baratta, The American Prospect
• How to Fight Rising Utility Bills? Take Over The Company, Activists Say. by Grace Ashford, The New York Times
• As Electricity Bills Rise, Activists Are Demanding Public Control of Utilities by Derek Seidman, Truthout
• VIDEO: Local group to call for public power utility at Tucson City Council meeting by News 4 Tucson KVOA
• Ann Arbor group to begin collecting signatures in effort to establish city-owned electric utility by Kyle Davidson, Michigan Advance
• OPINION: State should buy a controlling interest to make PNM greener, cheaper by Stephen Fischmann, Santa Fe New Mexican
• Advantages of municipal power committee formed by Willmar Utilities Commission by Jennifer Kotila, West Central Tribune 
• Report finds New Yorkers paying more for outdated grid as electricity costs surge by Staff, FingerLakes1.com

Public power inspiration and education

(from shorter to longer!)

• Breach Collective Ratifies Second Landmark Union Contract by Breach United
• Democrats Just Realized They Have a Winning Climate Message by Liza Featherstone, The New Republic
• Power Brokers by Nick Bowlin, Harper’s Magazine
• Fossil energy minimum viable scale by Josh Lappen and Emily Grubert, Science
• Electric and Natural Gas Utility Rate Hikes Tracker by Akshay Thyagarajan, Jamie Friedman, and Amanda Levin, Center for American Progress
• ATLAS OF PUBLIC POWER by Andrea Johnson

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!

With gratitude and solidarity,
The small but mighty (and growing!) team at Public Grids