In the com­ing days, mil­lions of Florid­i­ans will return home to rebuild in the after­math of Hur­ri­cane Irma. Also now tasked with rebuild­ing are Florida’s major util­i­ties — com­pa­nies like Nex­tEra Ener­gy, Inc., Duke Ener­gy and Emera Inc.

These com­pa­nies face a choice: To dou­ble down on a util­i­ty mod­el that’s vul­ner­a­ble to storms and fuel­ing more bru­tal ones, or start tran­si­tion­ing to a grid bet­ter equipped to han­dle hur­ri­canes — and help keep them from get­ting worse. The ques­tion is whether they can be trust­ed to choose well.

As of Fri­day, rough­ly 3.8 mil­lion Flori­da res­i­dents were with­out pow­er. The state’s util­i­ties will have to restore elec­tric­i­ty to their cus­tomers while recon­struct­ing vast swaths of the state’s trans­mis­sion lines and gen­er­at­ing capac­i­ty. Flori­da Pow­er & Light Com­pa­ny (FPL) — a Nex­tEra sub­sidiary and the nation’s third-largest pow­er provider—warns that it could take weeks before all of its cus­tomers are able to turn their lights back on. FPL pres­i­dent and CEO Eric Silagy called the scale of the out­ages ​“unprece­dent­ed,” and one com­mu­ni­ca­tions rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the same util­i­ty said that what lies ahead ​“is going to be a very, very lengthy restora­tion, arguable the longest and most com­plex in U.S. history.”

There’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty post-Irma to rev­o­lu­tion­ize Florida’s pow­er sup­ply, but not one that com­pa­nies like FPL are like­ly to take advan­tage of. As a recent report from Insid­e­Cli­mate News found, FPL start­ed spon­sor­ing research into cli­mate change in the ear­ly 1970s before even­tu­al­ly get­ting involved in efforts to sup­press evi­dence of ris­ing tem­per­a­tures. The South­ern Com­pa­ny, which owns Pan­han­dle elec­tric­i­ty provider Gulf Pow­er, for decades con­tributed to pub­lic rela­tions cam­paigns cast­ing doubt on the exis­tence of cli­mate change, and fun­neled hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars into bogus cli­mate skep­tic research.

Like their coun­ter­parts in oth­er states, Flori­da util­i­ties have gone to war with clean ener­gy, too. Last year, they poured a col­lec­tive $21 mil­lion ($8 mil­lion from FPL alone) into an unsuc­cess­ful bal­lot mea­sure aimed at stunt­ing var­i­ous kinds of third-par­ty financ­ing for solar pow­er. Beyond that effort, investor-owned util­i­ties are a force to reck­on with in Flori­da pol­i­tics; the sec­tor employs one lob­by­ist for every two state leg­is­la­tors — the most of any indus­try. This spring, FPL was found to have writ­ten whole sec­tions of anti-solar leg­is­la­tion spon­sored by state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ray Rodriguez, who had pre­vi­ous­ly accept­ed $15,000 from the utility.

With major util­i­ties aligned in oppo­si­tion, the road to renew­ables’ pro­lif­er­a­tion in Flori­da may not be an easy one. John Far­rell, direc­tor of the Ener­gy Democ­ra­cy Ini­tia­tive at the Insti­tute for Local Self-Reliance, says that poli­cies to tran­si­tion Florida’s elec­tric­i­ty over to renew­ables could go a long way toward being able to get lights back on more quick­ly after major storms.

In an ide­al rebuild­ing process, Far­rell told In These Times, ​“What we would see is, from a pol­i­cy stand­point, that [util­i­ties] would be more sup­port­ive of ways cus­tomers could build their own pow­er gen­er­a­tion. In a sys­tem like we have today, if one pow­er line is knocked out, it can affect tens of thou­sands of peo­ple … If we have lots of dif­fer­ent pock­ets of gen­er­a­tion, we can fig­ure out ways to fill in the gaps.”

The sys­tem Far­rell describe is what’s known as a micro­grid. The basic idea behind a micro­grid is to have a bound­ed geo­graph­ic area reliant on the same set of pow­er sources that can be oper­at­ed inde­pen­dent­ly of a larg­er elec­tric grid, or ​“island­ed,” in ener­gy-wonk par­lance. This allows homes and busi­ness­es to share pow­er, mean­ing if pow­er gets shut off dur­ing a storm, enti­ties that get their pow­er from the micro­grid can keep their lights on.

Under Flori­da law and that of sev­er­al oth­er states, such a prac­tice is ille­gal, as it would mean under­cut­ting util­i­ties’ legal­ly pro­tect­ed monop­oly. The vast major­i­ty of solar arrays are cur­rent­ly tied to the elec­tric grid by law, mean­ing they shut down when the pow­er goes off.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, FPL lob­by­ists have fought to keep this statute on the books. If util­i­ties allowed micro­grids — whether ser­vic­ing large insti­tu­tions or small com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial areas — they could help main­tain pow­er in a del­uge. Instead, accord­ing to FPL pol­i­cy, even ratepay­ers with solar pan­els, who could fea­si­bly keep their lights on dur­ing an out­age, are for­bid­den from doing so. ​“Renew­able gen­er­a­tor sys­tems con­nect­ed to the grid with­out bat­ter­ies are not a stand­by pow­er source dur­ing an FPL out­age,” the utility’s hand­book states.

The prob­lem, Far­rell notes, is root­ed in FPL and oth­er pri­vate elec­tric­i­ty providers’ busi­ness mod­el. ​“This is true of investor-owned util­i­ties in all states like Flori­da, where there are monop­o­lies: Their mon­ey for the share­hold­ers comes from get­ting a rate of return from cap­i­tal they spend, and build­ing some­thing like a pow­er plant,” he told me. ​“The util­i­ty can build a micro­grid and make mon­ey from it, but that would mean doing some­thing different.”

Being able to keep pow­er on in the way that micro­grids allow for could prove espe­cial­ly use­ful for places like hos­pi­tals and oth­er insti­tu­tions that pro­vide essen­tial and ener­gy-depen­dent ser­vices. It may have even saved lives this past week. Thir­ty-six hos­pi­tals in Flori­da closed as a result of Irma, and eight peo­ple were found dead in a swel­ter­ing Hol­ly­wood, Fl. nurs­ing home where a pow­er out­age left more than 100 res­i­dents with­out air con­di­tion­ing. (Exact caus­es of death are still being investigated.)

It’s not as if there aren’t exam­ples of what a more inno­v­a­tive recov­ery could look like. In the wake of Hur­ri­cane Sandy, storm-impact­ed states extend­ed financ­ing to towns that want­ed to devel­op micro­grids. As a result, Con­necti­cut became the first state to roll out a statewide micro­grid pro­gram for busi­ness­es and pub­lic ser­vices to main­tain pow­er dur­ing out­ages, and cities such as Hobo­ken, N.J. and Fair­field, Conn. each accept­ed their states’ offers.

New York launched a $40 mil­lion com­pe­ti­tion called New York Prize, aimed at mak­ing pow­er sys­tems more resilient, with a focus on micro­grid tech­nol­o­gy. Sandy was a launch pad for New York’s ​“Reform­ing the Ener­gy Vision,” a 2013 plan to dras­ti­cal­ly alter the state’s ener­gy reg­u­la­tion land­scape. Even New York City’s biggest and hard­ly pro­gres­sive util­i­ty providers — PSEG and ConEd — launched new grid man­age­ment pro­grams in the months after the storm.

Like PSEG and ConEd in New York, there are plen­ty of play­ers jump­ing on the micro­grid band­wag­on for pure­ly prag­mat­ic rea­sons. For­mer FERC chair John Welling­hoff sung their prais­es, cit­ing the threats to cyber­se­cu­ri­ty posed by a high­ly cen­tral­ized grid. The Depart­ment of Defense rec­og­nizes micro­grids as a key way to pro­tect elec­tric­i­ty against ter­ror­ism and cyber­at­tacks. Fol­low­ing a direc­tive in 2011’s Nation­al Defense Autho­riza­tion Act, the mil­i­tary is cur­rent­ly deploy­ing them in its oper­a­tions around the world. Rick Perry’s Depart­ment of Ener­gy recent­ly announced that it would devote $50 mil­lion to research into microgrids.

Micro­grids are even mak­ing some head­way in Flori­da. Duke Ener­gy — anoth­er major elec­tric­i­ty provider there — had shown inter­est in micro­grids even before Irma. The util­i­ty is part of a $32 mil­lion push from the Depart­ment of Ener­gy into Resilient Dis­tri­b­u­tion Sys­tems. The ini­tia­tive is one part of a $50 mil­lion fund­ing round that includes $20 mil­lion for a series of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty projects.

Dis­trib­uted ener­gy is also trendy in Sil­i­con Val­ley, as well as often-over­lap­ping green tech cir­cles. In the Bay Area, Tes­la and the city of San Fran­cis­co are each work­ing to get micro­grids online in the event of a major earth­quake. One green tech sum­mit in Oak­land last year, VERGE16, pow­ered itself entire­ly off of a microgrid.

The tech sector’s excite­ment makes sense. To major — and espe­cial­ly monop­oly — util­i­ties, micro­grids are an inher­ent­ly dis­rup­tive tech­nol­o­gy, and repli­cate some of the lib­er­tar­i­an-tinged shar­ing econ­o­my ethos that ani­mates every­thing from Uber to Airbnb.

Also like those ser­vices, what’s being trad­ed isn’t the good­will of strangers, but real mon­ey. In that con­text, the scalar con­cerns that come with micro­grids’ promise seem almost self-evi­dent: If util­i­ties allow them and there’s a local appetite for it, com­mu­ni­ties that can afford to cre­ate a micro­grid will. For oth­ers, the finan­cial bar­ri­ers to such a dras­tic tran­si­tion may well prove too high, espe­cial­ly in more rur­al areas with already aged infra­struc­ture. That’s where util­i­ties can come in.

“Maybe they use their staff to help con­struct the project…maybe they help finance the sys­tem, or build the cir­cuit­ry,” Far­rell says. ​“There are a lot of ways that util­i­ties could pro­vide their exper­tise that are dif­fer­ent rom sim­ply being the sole provider of elec­tric­i­ty.” Crit­i­cal­ly, big util­i­ties could help lev­el the play­ing field to help more com­mu­ni­ties access clean, reli­able and storm-resilient power.

When it comes to investor-owned util­i­ties, the issue isn’t whether the tech­nol­o­gy for such trans­for­ma­tions is avail­able, but whether there are prof­its to be made. For poor neigh­bor­hoods, that may not always be the case. This means that even an earnest embrace of renew­ables and more dis­trib­uted forms of ener­gy gen­er­a­tion could splin­ter uneven­ly — leav­ing more well-off ratepay­ers with state-of-the-art, clean-run­ning pow­er that can oper­ate dur­ing a storm — and every­one else reliant on out­mod­ed fuel and infrastructure.

The dilem­mas fac­ing micro­grids are those fac­ing renew­ables more gen­er­al­ly. While the recent growth of micro­grids has been excit­ing, a mas­sive invest­ment in both research and devel­op­ment — and actu­al con­struc­tion — is need­ed to bring such sys­tems to scale. There’s also no fed­er­al plan for what the tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fuels could look like. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and sev­er­al state gov­ern­ments — Florida’s includ­ed — seem com­mit­ted to mak­ing sure that tran­si­tion nev­er hap­pens. And even if there is polit­i­cal will to get off of fos­sil fuels, how that tran­si­tion is car­ried out could make the dif­fer­ence between a cli­mate-changed future — rife with inequal­i­ties — and one that pre­serves every oth­er form of inequal­i­ty that’s baked into our cur­rent econ­o­my, only with more solar pan­els and wind tur­bines. Whether com­pa­nies are inter­est­ed in devel­op­ing micro­grids is a dif­fer­ent ques­tion from whether they’ll help ensure every­one can access them.

As Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na showed, cor­po­ra­tions and cor­po­rate-friend­ly gov­ern­ments are more than will­ing to swoop in after a major dis­as­ter to pull pub­lic goods into the pri­vate sec­tor. In Texas, Hous­ton has already appoint­ed a for­mer Shell CEO to head its post-Har­vey recov­ery operation.

The ques­tion Irma pos­es is whether the oppo­site can hap­pen. If util­i­ties like FPL aren’t will­ing to make the kinds of invest­ments need­ed to save lives when the worst hap­pens, what alter­na­tives can take their place? And what does the fight look like to beat them polit­i­cal­ly? As the cli­mate cri­sis accel­er­ates, Amer­i­cans will face a fight over their pow­er in more ways than one — espe­cial­ly just after a dis­as­ter strikes.