Yves here. Even though this piece is written for a UK audience, the principles have broad application. Seattle is one of the few US cities that operates its electrical utility. Can natives tell me how well that’s working, and what if any shortcomings need to be addressed, particularly from a clean energy perspective?

By Cat Hobbs, director of We Own It. Originally published at openDemocracy

Whether it’s 11 years or 18 months, we haven’t got long to make the big, bold changes needed to prevent global climate catastrophe.

If we’re going to have a chance of preventing widespread disaster, we can’t keep waiting for the private sector to deliver our clean, green energy future. Public ownership is the way to transition quickly to zero carbon, hand in hand with workers, citizens and communities.

Privatisation Failed – if You See Sid, Tell Him

In 1986, when Thatcher sold off British Gas, the company was floated on the stock market, accompanied by the famous ‘Tell Sid’ advertising campaign. In 1990, the UK’s regional electricity boards were privatised. But a shareholder democracy owned by people like ‘Sid’ never materialised.

We don’t own much of our energy, individually or collectively. The UK is rich in offshore wind, but only 7% is owned by UK entities and only 0.07% is in UK public ownership. We’ve flogged off our nuclear to China and France – for ‘£17 billion of risk and not much benefit’ as Aditya Chakrabortty points out. Our energy infrastructure is owned by National Grid and other private companies owned by investors from Qatar to China, to US to Hong Kong. The Big Six supply companies (British Gas, E.ON, EDF Energy, nPower, Scottish Energy and SSE) are owned by UK, French, German and Spanish investors.

These investors aren’t interested in clean, green, affordable energy. They’re interested in their profits. That’s why since energy was privatised we’ve seen rip off prices, burning of fossil fuels and a lack of investment in the infrastructure we need. The government needs to set the pace and start the race. Bringing energy into public ownership would save us around £3.2 billion in dividends and a lower cost of borrowing – money that could be reinvested in getting us to our carbon targets quicker.

The transition to a low-carbon, sustainable future cannot be left to the investor class, CEOs of multinational companies, or governments that refuse to break with the current paradigm of endless growth, the imperative of profit, and the enforced chaos of competition in strategic sectors. Acting alongside other social movements, unions can begin by explaining the challenge in clear terms. Unions must then develop transformational strategies that are anchored in a paradigm of sharing, solidarity, and sufficiency. This is perhaps the only way to ensure a Just Transition for workers, and survival for human society as a whole.

Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, Working Paper 11 ‘Trade Unions and Just Transition’

Across the World, People Are Taking Energy Back

The Transnational Institute (TNI) has tracked cities around the worldthat are taking control of their local energy supply, sometimes backed by popular votes

The city of Munich in Germany is particularly inspiring. It has committed itself to developing an electricity supply that is 100% municipal and 100% from renewable energy. The council did this because they were tired of waiting for the private companies to make the necessary investments, and they were confident that the city council could do the job better – putting sustainability before profit. By 2025, the utility company aims to produce so much green energy that the entire demand of the city can be met.

We propose that you would have easy access to data and information, and could give your feedback and ideas online, on the phone or in a shopfront on every high street. You’d be a member of ‘Participate: Energy’ – the new, democratically accountable organisation representing energy users. Energy reps will sit on supervisory boards, alongside trade union reps and civil society reps – like environmental NGOs, fuel poverty groups, renters’ unions and local community groups.

Public planning processes would include large scale meetings every five years, annual reporting back, open board meetings and citizens assemblies for difficult or controversial issues.

We need local, regional and national conversations about our energy future. Andrew Cumbers explains how in Norway, the publicly owned company Statoil was set up in 1972 in order to control the use of oil in the interests of the ‘whole of society.’ Although Norway now needs to transition beyond oil, we can still learn from this example. The company was subject to a lot of democratic scrutiny and debate in parliament and a new, independent ‘Petroleum Directorate’ was created, with responsibility for regulating and controlling North Sea oil and gas resources, which led to better health and safety for workers.

The conversations should involve organisations and groups who understand the challenges in the energy supply chain. Controversial, extremely damaging extraction techniques like fracking should be outlawed altogether. Asad Rehman has argued the Green New Deal will be dirtier than we think as the technology often depends on extracting rare minerals from countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chile.

These accountability mechanisms and democratic processes would go hand in hand with a bold plan for a Green New Deal – delivered through public ownership at every stage: generation of renewable energy, transmission and distribution across the country, and supply to our homes.

Generating Green Energy and Green Jobs

Government needs a duty to decarbonise – and that means leaving the oil and gas in the ground. Platform points out that extracting 20 billion barrels of oil and gas will make it totally impossible to meet our carbon targets. The UK and Scottish governments need to switch subsidies to renewables and work with trade unions and communities on a plan for just transition.

The PCS report ‘Just Transition and Energy Democracy’ explains that over 250,000 mining jobs were lost in the 1980s and 90s – we need to ‘address the legitimate fears of workers that they will again be left to pay a disproportionate price.’

To answer this, government, councils and unions need to work together to introduce new green, permanent, unionised, skilled jobs and revitalise communities across the UK. We need a new Lucas Plan, with workers at the heart of the process – looking at how technology can be best deployed for social benefit.

We can create a million secure Government jobs in renewable energy, in increasing energy efficiency by insulating homes and public buildings free of charge, in hugely expanding cheap public transport to get people and freight onto cleaner forms of transit, and in developing the “green skills” that we need through education and training.

One Million Climate Jobs report, Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group

Public ownership can create hundreds of thousands of jobs in generating energy and in new industry supply chains. There are very few places in the UK where renewable energy can’t happen – wind and solar can be delivered almost everywhere. This creates a huge opportunity to reverse decades of underinvestment in ex-mining communities decimated by Thatcher.

Platform estimates that 40,000 existing oil workers (direct and supply chain) may need to be in a different job by 2030. But their research shows, with ambitious government policies, we can create three to four times as many jobs in clean energy industries.

Workers and climate change protestors joined together in an 11 day occupation against the closure of the Vestas wind turbine factory in 2009. (The company has now created some new jobs but not as many as it axed). We could take control over decisions like this – with a publicly owned British company with a long term strategy for turbine manufacture, with workers, citizens and the public on the board.

The public sector can build its renewables capacity and expertise and ultimately deliver far more efficiently than the private sector. Modelling work by Frontier Economics for IPPR shows how full public ownership through construction and operation can generate substantial savings for consumers because of the lower cost of capital. In addition, there are the profits coming back to the public purse – Swindon Borough Council has a solar bond that generates £1 million every year.

Connecting Communities to the Grid

The National Grid – which transmits electricity and gas across the country – and the regional distribution companies which distribute energy – were built for an age of coal, oil and nuclear. The future of energy is decentralised and renewable. We need to own this vital infrastructure so we can upgrade it.

These private energy monopolies often make it difficult for community groups who want to develop new renewable energy projects, so the process is slower and more expensive than it should be. Communities in Harris and Lewis have been slowed down by National Grid in their effort to develop a wind farm. Communities in Cornwall were told by Western Power Networks (owned by shareholders in New York) that new solar farms would require ‘quite expensive’ investment in infrastructure.

Under public ownership, National Grid and the regional distribution companies would have a duty to work closely with community groups to develop new renewable energy, and to steward public assets and land. In Germany, renewable energy producers have a guaranteed right of access to the electricity grid.

‘Public-Common partnerships’ can be developed – this means councils create shared institutions with cooperatives or community interest companies to manage common resources in a democratic way. In Wolfhagen in Germany, the town’s energy utility is jointly owned by the municipality and a new cooperative. Community energy projects can also be rolled out to power a solar railway (the ‘Riding Sunbeams’project) to help decarbonise transport.

As Andrew Cumbers points out, in Denmark, the government has encouraged local, decentralised wind power on a huge scale, through funding and support for local, collective ownership of turbines. The Danish Wind Turbine Owners Association is an independent, democratically elected membership association set up to represent these small scale, private and cooperative owners. With 5000 members, it provides a strong voice for local communities on energy policy.

Supply Companies That Work for All of Us

Customer satisfaction with the Big Six companies is low. Only 32% of the public trust the energy industry. Tying ourselves in knots to create markets and choice in every sector doesn’t make sense. Energy customers don’t want to switch – 61% of us have never switched company or only switched once – so we pay a loyalty penalty.

Citizens Advice has also shown how we overpay because of the way energy is regulated – this amounts to £11 billion over the past 15 years. The poor are hit hardest, spending 14% of their income on energy and water.

Publicly owned energy supply companies would have a duty to make sure everyone has access to affordable energy. This could include progressive tariffs to tackle over consumption and fuel poverty at the same time by charging high use households more while giving everyone some free energy – alongside a ‘no cut off’ policy.

Forward thinking councils are already created new, inspiring, publicly owned supply companies – with Nottingham-based Robin Hood Energyboldly leading the way and setting up 10 white label partnership agreements with local authorities around the country. Bristol Energyand The People’s Energy Company are also breaking new ground. We need to sign up to get our energy from these companies – then build on these exciting options across the country. Ultimately when we get the privatised energy companies out, regional distribution companies could offer supply to people in the area, but with local companies taking over wherever they exist.

The Green New Deal should also mean we are energy citizens not energy consumers. We’re all part of the war effort against climate change.

Ann Pettifor points out that there are 27 million households in the UK, most built in the Victorian era. We have some of the least efficient housing in Europe, and the highest proportion of fuel poverty – 11% of English households. The Green New Deal is an opportunity to change all that. Every house can become a power station, with double glazing, insulation and solar panels (unless it’s about to be rebuilt).

Trusted, publicly owned companies can create new jobs for advisors to go door to door. Pettifor proposes a ‘carbon army’ of workers, highly qualified, skilled and unskilled workers to retrofit and reconstruct our homes and buildings, advise on cutting energy use and bills and roll out smart meters. This would pay for itself, boosting employment and tax revenue in every region of the UK.

PCS describes the situation perfectly: ‘There is no bailout for the publicly owned climate bank as we’ve already been doing insolvency with the planet for far too long’. We have to ‘remove capital from the driving seat of energy transition.’

Renewable, zero carbon energy. Upgraded infrastructure. Affordable energy for all. And all of it creating new, green, permanent jobs. Let’s do it. Whether you’re a citizen, a worker, part of a community group – or all three – your country needs you.

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44 comments

Very good! I recently met a group in Spain whose motto is “democratizing electricity”. They were angry because after Sanchez government set the very welcomed new law regulating solar PV instalations, utility companies are rushing to build solar farms like crazy with the objective of saturating the market ASAP and prevent roof top installations. It makes much more sense to produce solar PV the nearest to the points of demand and reduce land occupation with huge PV fields but again, the interests of wealthy investors go first.

Here in AZ the same issue is a problem. The major electrical utilities have recently been pursuing a 2 prong approach to solar PV installations. When the Republican dominated Arizona Corporation Commission mandated 30% renewable by 2035 they allowed the utilities to meet that demand by immediately constructing massive projects while simultaneously making it more difficult for homeowners and small businesses who wanted to install solar panels on their own roof and own the system to do so.

This, along with reducing or eliminating incentives, has put a damper on new installations in the state that has the best solar resource in the country. We were offered a deal by our electric utility that if we allowed the utility to install 14 solar modules, 3.5 to 4 kW of solar, they would give us a $30 credit each month for the next 20 years. The utility would own the installation and maintain it. The utilities want to have total control.

A 4 kW installation migth yield more than 8.000 kWh per year in Arizona. Supposing 0,25$/kWh that means 2000 $ in energy saved from the grid or about 500 $ if sold to the grid at 50c/ kWh. Just back of the envelope calculations.

For those not familiar with roof top solar installations AND reading quickly. The difference between the 4kW value of the panels and the 8 kWh (kilowatt HOURS) is the long, clear days available to an Arizona rooftop (facing South–toward the Suns arc in the sky).

However, I could quibble with GF’s comment that Arizona has the best solar access in the nation. Maybe. Nevada just north of Arizona has similar solar conditions AND is at a higher elevation (cooler temps) where PV panels are more efficient.

Not familiar with the economics of Arizona electricity, so have no idea what that $0.50 / kWh includes….

east of the Mississippi, off-peak, the cost of electricity (at the utility level) is only ~$0.025 per kWh. Peak, barring crazy, abnormal price fluctuations, tops out ~$0.10 per kWh…again at the “wholesale” level, not the price quoted in bills, and not include delivery charges or taxes.

Yep. Sorry my mistake. I was passing 50$/MWh to 50c/kWh it should have been 5c/kWh that gives 400$ annually at such wholesale price or about 800$ in Mississipi according to your quote. There may be a tax on those sales.

the problem is not lack of ‘public ownership’. the problem is engineering and physics based. wind and solar are only viable if battery technology advances well beyond what exists today. nuclear is neatly ruled out (as ilargi pointed out a few days ago),

“you can not run an economy on an energy source that generates economic losses. It is NOT an option.”

you cannot ‘upgrade the infrastructure’ without a massive amount of fossil fuels. offering ‘affordable energy for all’ is astonishingly naive. we need to stop pretending that solutions exist, because (aside from yve’s (never-successfully-refuted) ‘radical conservation’) they do not.

My intuition is that ‘radical conservation’ will never be realized voluntarily. It would take generations for new normative behaviors, i.e., reducing the desire to travel beyond the horizon or living in communal shelters to be culturally accepted as the way to live.
My sense is that climate disruption will lead to mass migrations upsetting the nation/state order and leading to our species die off. It can hoped that then these new ideas of public ownership and enough technological knowledge can be carried forward in the collective memory to attempt to live in a future within clean energy environment.

We generate plenty of power ( & food) in this country, but it is wasted:

by the citizenry (turn off the light when you leave the room, “Huh?”) & (watch “Just Eat It”) ;

by Industry (FB uses more power for servers than all of the hospitals in the US combined) & (Food producers and distributors throw away enough food each day to feed all of the under nourished in the advanced economies).

I’m reminded again of the most profound insight(of many) I got from Frank Herbert: “Hydraulic Despotism”. the King upstream wants the kingdom downstream…so he dams the river…tells those downstream, “submit, or perish”.
this is the business model i see just about everywhere.

The problem with the cited article lies in the underlying assumptions, and the source of the assumptions seems to be that the preferred solutions are chosen for ideological rather than demonstrable, functional reasons.

There is no weighing of the advantages or disadvantages of different types of generation – it is assumed that a mix of PV and wind is the obvious answer, or at least, those are the only methods that seem to be mentioned.

There is an automatic assumption that such a mix is automagically cost-effective, with no consideration of the effects of trying to support a grid with a large number of variable energy sources, or of bypassing a grid altogether, with no analysis of the resulting impact on the economy and quality of life from a supply availability standpoint.

There is an evident assumption that small independent efforts will somehow mesh effectively, or worse, that they don’t have to share or load balance at all, again with no justification for such optimism. Were the only use for electricity running your transistor radio, that might be true, but someone who needs a reliable refrigerator to protect their insulin, or someone who needs power to perform their work might have a different view.

There is no consideration of the advantages of larger, more difficult and expensive forms of generation, even though in many areas such projects have provided the most reliable and cost effective generation… again, apparently because the ideology of the writer does not incline that way.

Practical issues with a deep significance for entire populations, like the availability of necessary power, need to address the practical and technical issues and facts, not launch into an ideologically driven unicorn hunt… particularly when tied to an entire raft of assumptions about how energy will be used involving an almost equally handwaved ‘plan’ for a massive transformation of much of the key underlying infrastructure of our entire civilization.

Not only has the author failed to demonstrate that their preferred solution can actually work, they have given no particularly good argument why other solutions cannot.

Picking a path before even examining the terrain is not the best way to reach a distant destination, yet that is precisely what the author seems to be exhorting his audience to do.

Math’s post made a lot of relevant points. Delivering all the electricity a home/office can use, 24/7/365 is a modern, taken-for-granted miracle. Very few people in the US under 40 has lived through a supply-constrained (not-storm-related) brownout.

Moving from today’s obviously imperfect system to a 100% renewable future is a literal engineering moonshot. And a lot of the technical obstacles are hand-waved away by Green New Deal advocates. Alas those obstacles can take pages to point out.

My bad. I tend to think the logically obvious to me will be logically obvious to others, which is not always true, of course. We all have different skills, backgrounds, and types and levels of information.

What the author is proposing won’t work, unless it can supply the needs of the populace.

There is no reason to believe it will work, and a bunch of real world experience thet indicates that it will not… for many or most people and many or most use cases. There will always be outliers who have specifically constrained needs, or fortunate resources, or a will to make any sacrifice to achieve a goal, for whom it will work. Such anecdotal ‘proofs’ are meaningless, like basing your procedure for changing a tire on some mother lifting a car off her child. A real solution must work for most people an acceptable part of the time.

Wish-fulfillment hope based handwaving is not a sound basis for policy.

Power is important, For many people it is a matter of life and death, in the short or intermediate term. For others it is the difference between managing to not die, and having a reasonably secure life. Frenzied change for the sake of fulfilling ideological goals via unicorn herding is massively irresponsible and likely to fail. A plan that is almost certain to fail is a waste of time, energy, and resources. The correct answer to someone waving a blueprint for a unicorn pasture is to analyze the proposal, and then see what possible ways there are to achieve simialar pragmatic goals.

If the goal is primarily political, it should be promptly dispatched to a more suitable venue for debate, and no one should attempt to screw with the vital infrastructure supporting the lives of millions or billions of people, and the project reformulated with a goal of providing for the real world needs of the population, rather than an excuse to implement some ideological ‘utopia’… which will probably end up looking like one or more classic dystopian novels.

On the other hand, “Whether it’s 11 years or 18 months, we haven’t got long to make the big, bold changes needed to prevent global climate catastrophe.” raises a red flag right there:

——————————-

THE ANALOGY

When you are in an unfamiliar building and smell smoke, the best response is not to yell “FIRE! FIRE! WE’RE ALL GOING TO BE DEAD IN TWO MINUTES!! FOLLOW ME RIGHT NOW!!!” and run off in a random direction toward an unknown part of the building.

The more rational response is to think a moment about what you know about the building and its layout and check for signs or evacuation maps. Then you walk, avoiding obstacles and falls, while watching for signs, maps, or other clues. When you get to a closed door you don’t dash through at top speed, you feel it to see if there is a fire on the other side. If necessary you deploy your flashlight (you do carry one at all times, don’t you? A real one, not one of those LEDs on the back of the cell phone whose battery is running down, that can actuall project a beam farther than 5m?) and use it to pick a direction or see farther signs. That may take a bit longer to start moving, but probably increases your actual chance of survival by an order of magnitude.

———————–

Launching oneself at top speed into a mass of unknown technical, economic, political, diplomatic, and scientific issues rather than actually analyzing the situation and alternatives is a plan to fail.

It seems clear that the author’s motivations and conclusions are at least as much based on ideology as informed logic, and the overall conclusions are somewhere between uncertain and farcical. Some of them may work in some places, under some circumstances, but there is no logical reason to believe there are not very different proposals that will work as well or better. Except for personal ideological goals.

Furthermore, it is clear that the writer does not grasp the physical magnitude of the issues involved, nor the time scales. A year or two in a small part of the planet makes ZERO difference in the final outcome. Ten years is probably not significant unless using it to properly analyze the problems and the solutions with their interdependencies, feedback loops, and subsidiary effects.

Furthermore, if the time scale is actually such that 11 years is a critical period, then the wholesale changes proposed are at best fruitless, and more likely damaging.

Do you actually think that a meaningful rebuild of centuries of infrastructure can be accomplished in 11 years? Of that the work required would be carbon neutral? Or that the money required isn’t also largely needed for schools, hospitals, food production, etc.? Or that parts of the plan will be badly executed or not work as promised?

If it’s really a critical 11 year time scale, better hope you can convince everyone in your area to revert to ‘peasant farmer’ as an occupation, and that you can convince the rest of the world to do likewise. What are the odds of that?

Clue: China, India, and Africa are building hundreds of coal fired power plants. They are not going to change just because you decided to embrace energy poverty and de-industrialization as a way of life.

Clue 2: If the solution won’t work, maybe thinking inside that particular box won’t get you to one. Time to try a new one? Or three?

————–

Remember that a real solution must be ALL FOUR OF:

1. TECHNICALLY feasible (problems with this in the context of the real world rather than in promised usefulness lead to failures, here at least, in 2 below)

2. ECONOMICALLY feasible (see 3 below)

3. POLITICALLY feasible – (the Liberals launched a disastrous ‘Green Energy Act’. The last election reduced them to the point of no longer qualifying as an offical political party… the current government is cleaning up the mess, but it will take decades to repair the damage – the only things that contained the damage were (1) we have lots of very reliable hydro power and (2) most of our electricity comes from nuclear reactors, which are wonderful… the next generation will be even better. Oh, and the promised ‘Green energy industry boom’ vanished completely as soon as the government finished paying huge subsidies. Citizens are still taking losses of more than a billion dollars a year from the fiasco, not counting the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, and thousands of companies. If anyone offers you a chance to make your state/province/city/country rich as a result of installing ‘green energy’ with large subsidies, I’d try selling them a bridge or yacht I didn’t own. They could conceivably be that guilible, but they are more likely on the PT Barnum side of the equation than one of his marks.

4. DIPLOMATICALLY feasible (you have to get countries that are current or future major sources of greenhouse gasses to buy in)

While not directly about solutions, this does illustrate one of the many problems with the whole global warming discussion. How do you think this plays in countries where tens or hundreds of millions don’t even have any electricity, as first worlders tell them not to burn coal? Do you think it will make them stop electrification in the most cost effective, reliable, expandable, flexible way?

Great comments here Math, more insightful and quotable IMHO than the brave call to action in the original article. I shall charitably assume that ‘proven technology’ is not a dog whistle for nukes

But of course, diagnosing the immense challenges is vastly easier than solving them.

I suppose I fall somewhere between the declinist philosophy espoused by the Archdruid and the more pungent anarcho-fatalistic Tool camp: “Mom’s gonna flush it all away“. Unsustainable consumption is the ultimate cure for unsustainable consumption….

The problem with the cited article lies in the underlying assumptions, and the source of the assumptions seems to be that the preferred solutions are chosen for ideological rather than demonstrable, functional reasons.

The internal contradiction in this ideological point you’re making is kind of stunning. You want to present yourself as practical minded and serious in contrast to these ideologues. Well, every serious person agrees that the various energy options should be rigorously scrutinized. Can you explain how to go about this scrutiny without ideological presuppositions? On what basis are we judging the options? Which factors have priority over others? How can we possibly make these judgements without getting into normative, ie. ideological claims?

Also, I’m at a loss as to what about the article you’re actually disagreeing with. It seems like you’re bringing in some other content to argue with here? The three UK examples the author presents positively are each offering a mix of renewable and fossil fuel energy.

We live in the city of Seattle during the winter; our electric bill, for mid-January through mid-March, was $78. We have electric heat (!), electric stove, lights, appliances, etc. Not hot water. That’s for 900 sq ft., top floor, corner with lots of windows. I have only called them once, to inquire why I was not receiving a bill, and spoke to a real person, who was so nice I was practically in tears.

Summers we are in western NY, at my husband’s family’s place. Neighboring Jamestown, NY has had their own power generating plant for decades. They converted it from coal to natural gas. Friends in the city tell us that rates are low and I have not heard any complaints about outages. In the neighboring town, we are at the mercy of National Grid and their, ‘press one’ if you have no electricity.’

We were living in Long Beach, California during the Enron upheavals, and I remember reading that the City of Los Angeles, with its municipally-owned power system, was the only one not affected by the machinations of Enron.

We were living in Denver a decade ago, when Boulder was trying to wrest control of its electrical grid back from Xcel Energy. Hah! For a municipality, privatizing your power generation is like selling your soul to the Devil. Once it’s gone, good luck getting it back!

There are a large number of cities that have municipal power company, including Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Antonio, Austin and the entire State of Nebraska, as well as areas served by the TVA. In general, they seem to provide electricity at lower costs and with better service than IOUs, although some are worse. LADWP’s customer satisfaction numbers were lower than PG&E’s for example, but they are an outlier as the top performing utilities are usually municipal ones.

One thing to note is that because of the way federal government subsidies wind and solar through taxes, these utilities enter into power purchase agreements (PPAs) with investor owned companies, rather than own the facilities directly. This is despite the municipal utilities having lower cost structures (no property tax on generating equipment), cheaper debt (usually), and no profits compared to for profit utilities. The tax incentives are that important to the cost structure.

Unless the government shifts from tax subsidies to direct subsidies, public ownership of generation will decrease as renewable power increases. Democrats seem to have no interest in making this switch with Chuck Schumer calling for making the tax incentives permanent, which would benefit the IPPs owning the renewable generation and the Wall Street firms, who get additional fees from certain specialized financial structures (like tax equity financing).

Yes so I was like one of the few cities? No it seems very common to have municipal utilities. And it’s cheaper than all my other utility bills, easy to deal with etc.. Municipal utilities is the way to go, it works great, why would anyone do anything else?

But the vertical integration: are the the wind farms publicly owned? Doesn’t seem so. And are the natural gas companies publicly owned (and their fracking etc.)? No. Is Exxon Mobile publicly owned? Well, of course not.

I am served by a rural power co-op. Until 2 yrs ago, it had no generation cap’y, just distribution cap’y. They recently built a bio-mass (wood chips) generation facility. They offer net metering. They have no dog in the nuke/fossil game, except (big except) they buy power off the grid, produced elsewhere, much of which is coal and nuke genned. The co-op is throwback to the FDR days of Rural Electrification, and probably has analogs in many rural parts of the U.S. My kWH rate is 14 cents.

I live in the mid-Atl Appalachian area. Plenty of valleys, plenty of rain. Lots of hydro storage cap’y, for those wondering “where get the power when sun not shining”. Reference technology: Michigan utility, has wind farm next to Lake Michigan (Luddington, MI), pump water uphill to reservoir when wind blows, reverse and generate power when not. Giant, huge battery, few moving parts. Same Michigan utility had lot of coal-fired plants, needed the up-down reservoir to smooth consumption spikes. Swapped out coal for wind, wind operations most profitable component of company as of 2 yrs ago (last time I looked).

Points:
a. There are non-captive (e.g. doesn’t own generation) distribution entities. They are key ingredient. Don’t have to recover huge investments in stranded tech. They can move.
b. The co-op does all it can to encourage solar, and energy conservation. Every invoice is accompanied by flyers touting solar, or lessons on reducing demand. Its mission is to serve its members. Excess profits are returned to the members. (I kid you not. I got $25 back last year!)
c. This co-op seems like they would readily invest in utility-scale energy storage. This would be an excellent place for public investment.

in the ye olden days, electric utilities (often municipal-owned) was simple. Build a coal steam plant at the edge of town, run the wires into town. Utility owns the plant, the wires, fuels the boilers, charges its customers.

Now things are much more complicated:

1. given the regulatory structure and modern tech, most utilities generation subsidiaries (that only make power) and local delivery subsidiaries (that only delivery the electricity to your house). Both of these arms work with the RTOs/ISOs (the US-equivalent of the UK National Grid), on which electricity trades between local utilities/power plants via interstate grids.

2. Another problem with wind-solar is that (a) wind power generation is inconsistent, (b) solar power generation peaks at solar noon, human demand peaks from 4pm to 7pm, (c) even at the dead of night at 4:30am, civilization uses A LOT of juice. So either cut consumption and/or keep fission/nat. gas and/or solve the battery problem.

so for any move to 100% renewable to work it needs to solve (2) either by using (1) or replacing (1) with a nationalized power system.

PS, instead of bailing out PG&E, California has a chance to pivot to some form out state-owned utility by letting let PGE go bankrupt and then rebuilding from ruins. But from the other end of the country, it looks like the Cali. General Assembly is 100% regulatory captured, and once again Democrats are accomplices in bailing out incompetence. and most Cali. voters don’t care. just saying.

Die! PG&E Die!
Most of us in California don’t receive the millions in campaign contributions that PG&E hands out and we want PG&E (and SCE and SDG&E) to be replaced by municipal utilities. 25% of California’s electricity is already served by public entities (municipal utilities and irrigation districts) and the rates are cheaper, more renewable, locally governed, and actually care about fires burning down the state!!

Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) purchase most of the energy other than SMUD, LADWP, and municipal utilities. It won’t be long before they are the entities serving ALL electric needs.

Right now Wall Street is in the driver’s seat, but they will meet Enron in hell very soon.

People should definitely read The Solar Economy from Herman Scheer to understand the large difference between the economy of fossil fuel and the economy of 100% renewable energy supply. The debate is always divided between private and public where it should be about third party owned or locally owned. Denmark has a very large amount of its energy coming from citizen owned cooperative which, though private, are extremely competitive because in that case the energy sector is owned by shareholders who don’t want any profit since that would be absurd to put a margin on their own power bill.

The thing is that energy infrastructure are being built with a very high debt to equity ratio, so most of the money is not coming from utilities themselves but from the bank and based on the fact that there is a high confidence that consumers pay their utility bill. Utilities also get a competitive advantage because they are companies big enough to negociate with fossil fuel producers. In a fully renewable energy system, you don’t have any fuel to buy because the sun send no bill so consolidation does not give you any competitive advantage and then the bankability of the sector is only based on the consumer’s ability to pay its energy bill.

Moreover the highest risk is local acceptance of infrastructures so in the end in a renewable energy system, citizen cooperatives are much more bankable than large utilities so can get access to cheaper funding and can sell electricity at a cheaper price since they don’t have to rely on intermediaries.

What can be the bottle-neck is the power-grid. Investing in building new capacity in the power-grid is complicated and if something is complicated then the private-sector is either not willing to do it or will charge a lot to do it. Once a power-grid is in place then there are many interested ‘risk’-takers willing to invest in buying it and it is not uncommon that they find governments willing to sell out…
So for me, I don’t mind if the private sector generates the power as long as the market is regulated and the regulations are enforced but I see no reasons whatsoever to privatise existing power-grids.
The power-grids might appear boring compared to the power-generating plants and possibly that is why it is preferred to discuss the impressive-looking power-generation plants but of the two then the grid is where monopoly pricing can be done and where customers can get ripped-off.

You are right that monopoly pricing is obviously easier on the grid, and that is why even the most zealous market fundamentalist never argues for liberalization of the grid themselves. But monopoly pricing can also happen on the generation side. In fact, it is probably the market in which monopoly pricing with the lowest market share can happen (around 10 to 20% can be enough) due to the need to balance load and generation instantaneously. You can look into the California energy crisis if you want some détails on the many possible strategies to do so.

Suppose that the ‘socialist’ Sweden has done just that? Privatised/liberalized parts of the grid:http://swedishsmartgrid.se/in-english/the-swedish-electricity-market/grid-companies/
There was an interesting court-case about the result of the privatisation a couple of years ago. It was settled in favour of the private owner of that particular grid and the (some said too large) price-increase was allowed. Depreciation charge on a fully depreceated (but since revalued) asset was seen to be sufficient cause to justify an increase of the price of access to the grid. I think looters call that unlocking hidden value or some such…
Yep, monopoly pricing can happen almost anywhere. On the power generation side then it is easier to break up a monopoly than on the grid side.

Let me add that the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) serves all of Sacramento County plus some in Placer County. It has been around since 1923 and currently generates some $5 billion in revenue. It is a public utility and employs over 2000 people. It has been a leader in renewable energy for decades. If you are not in its district you receive your energy from PG&E, a private (investor owned), inept, incompetent, power producer with an astounding record of unreliability.

Seattle City light is my hometown utility, and I consider it a (perhaps increasingly rare) point of pride for our community. In terms of clean energy, we get around 90% of our power from hydroelectric. The next highest source is nuclear, which is only about 4% of the mix. The rest is made up of tiny slices of wind, natural gas, coal, and other sources. But since the middle of the previous decade City Light has been purchasing carbon offsets to make the city 100% carbon neutral (though I personally can’t vouch for the veracity of these carbon offset outcomes, perhaps someone else can).

They also officially support and encourage rooftop solar, though because Seattle only has about 150 days of sun per year, one can really only hope to lower their power bills (which also should probably be balanced against the upfront cost).

Granted hydroelectric has other negative impacts on the environment, and nuclear has not been able to prove itself cost-effective (as mentioned in a comment above), not to mention the rare, though massively impactful, dangers it can pose; but overall Seattle City Light has done well for us. I think it stands up fairly well as a model of how a public utility can focus on green energy as a matter of policy, as opposed to green energy as more of a hoped-for byproduct (or “unicorn hunt”) of the so-called “pragmatic” for-profit model.

Clearly this is only the case in certain situations, and, possibly, for certain technology choices, or certain degrees of local obstruction by the needlessly fearful and uninformed.

We get 61% of our power from nuclear plants, and have for decades, France gets a higher percentage from nuclear reactors.

New generation plants will offer higher fuel efficiencies, reduced waste, greater flexibility, and an opportunity to delete some of the fossil fuel ‘load levelling’ plants,

At least one new design will be able to respond to load changes on the scale of a minute rather than several hours, due to operating outside the realm of xenon poisoning.

Some in service CANDU designs can accomodate a variance of 300MW per reactor for load following purposes.

Modular reactors in the 50MW (thermal) range could completely revamp power generation in remote areas.

Molten salt and molten metal reactor designs allow for inherently safe reactors capable of using the spent fuel from current light water reactors, and burning up 98% of the fissionable material in the spent fuel, while inactivating many of the fission products. This compares to more like 1-2% burn-up in older LWR designs. It’s a good thing we kept those old fuel rods accessible.

I believe all the power generating nuclear plants in France are the same design. US designs are one-off. France has a very good history with nuclear power. While they may provide reliable base power output, they do have catastrophic consequences, if damaged. They do have “useful life expectancy”, as well. Most communities have chosen to decommission them (SMUD rate payers, Diablo Canyon (SLO, CA coast) and San Onofre’ in SoCal (which was upgraded improperly and then ratepayers decided to abandon it). My point: Nuclear has implementation problems that even Wall Street won’t bankroll unless given government bailout guarantees.

I’m all for Nevadans choosing nuclear power plants. The nuclear waste depository is nearby (southern Nevada). But they don’t want them either; their preference is solar PV, wind, and some hydro (Hoover Dam).
So, it seems nuclear is odd man out. Fortunately, the state of Nevada consumes most of it’s power in Reno and Las Vegas (neon lights, water features, and sewer plant operation (for the tourists), no heavy industry (other than the lithium storage battery factory outside Reno). Oh, yeah battery storage, that may be a useful combination with unreliable wind and solar. Maybe those folks in Nevada are on to something.

That sounds grand- but how to account for cleanup and contamination costs externalised to dozens or hundreds of generations of our descendants?

Wind and solar don’t leave millennia long pollution trails. They’re also getting cheaper by the year. The battery problem is well on the way to solving itself as well- more manufacturing capacity is coming on line every year and even current technology batteries considered spent for original purposes like cars can be redeployed as stationary energy storage and load balancing for decades before needing to be recycled.

You cannot reason with “math is your friend” with such arguments. To him, people who do not consider nuclear energy to be the pinnacle of human civilization can only be irrational people with a very limited understanding of physics and mathematics, so their opinion is totally irrelevant to him. His particular brand of hubris is very representative of the French nuclear engineer mindset and does not lend itself to constructive debates.

Every time I see a reference to a municipally owned generating plant it’s like hitting a mental pothole, as in ‘what? why?’,

I find it hard to see how such a small entity can achieve efficiency, expertise, and redundancy, Cost overheads would be another potential issue. As well, reduced scale might limit the cost-effectiveness or the ability to finance a truly optimal solution.

Has anyone looked at the advantages of pushing generation up to the state level in places like Alaska, or Texas, or to multistate consortia where states are smaller and/or less populous?

In smaller countries, like the UK and France, national generation infrastructure makes sense.

There are two sides to it. A national government that’s a monetary sovereign can cook up the money / ration tickets / permission slips — whatever name you want to give money — to mobilize work and resources to build the stuff that we need. State or municipal governments will face that extra barrier, and might not get over it.
On the other hand, national governments and huge corporations can be so big that they spend 24/7/365 sitting talking to themselves, and never bother taking any action at all. That’s what we’ve been watching for the last decade or so. Like in the movies, it might take a rag-tag band of misfits to get the bit in their teeth and get some results.

25% of California electricity is provided by municipal utilities (SMUD, LADWP, NCPA (15 municipal utilities), and the irrigation districts. All are cheaper and more renewable than the IOUs (PG&E, SCE) except for a couple. Some are VERY small such as Biggs or Gridley. Alameda Municipal Power is the oldest utility west of the Mississippi (formed 1887) and has rates currently 15% below PG&E (soon to be 30-40% below after the bankruptcy), is 100% GHG neutral (80% renewable/20% large hydro), and is governed by a volunteer citizen public utility board. Not only Alameda, but the municipal utilities are safe, cost effective, renewable, and locally governed. Point 2 does not hold up!

So when EDF predicted in the 70s that France would consume 2000 TWH of electricity in 2000 to pressure the government into accepting their breakneck pace of nuclear power plant construction, was it a “truly optimal solution”? When we ended up only consuming 500 TWH in 2000, and are now facing the daunting task of replacing all the reactors that went online at almost the same time, is it a “truly optimal solution”? Your basic misunderstanding of uncertainties in the context of non-linear optimization should make you consider using a less condescending user name.