Over the last two years, a major, though dispersed, movement has been underway across the United States. The movement, inspired by a growing distrust of private, investor-owned power companies, is to usher in a new era of publicly owned electric utilities to provide electricity to people. We've seen this pop up in communities from coast to coast, from San Diego to New Hampshire and Maine.Â
The latest battleground for this effort is in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where a new grassroots organization has formed to grow support for kicking out investor-owned utility DTE and bringing in a publicly-owned electric utility. According to the group, Michigan is already a hotbed for publicly-owned power corporations—42 cities in the state have public powers and, enjoy "lower rates and higher reliability."Â
Increasing electricity rates and concerns over reliability as weather extremes create more powerful storms and outage risks have put a focus on whether the investor-owned model is working for communities. However, campaigns for public power are often up against the big money of private utilities, and public power advocates have been unsuccessful in their recent attempts to push private power out. The blueprint does not yet exist in modern times.Â
I know I'm going to be tracking these public power fights that are sure to be a regular election season battle in the coming years. So far, private utilities have been successful in convincing voters that the unknowns surrounding a transition to public power pose too great a risk, and so it's better to stick with the devil they know. I believe once one of these public power initiatives finds success, it will have a domino effect. It will be something to watch over this next decade.Â