Energy Democracy: Taking Back Power A Comparative Analysis of Investor-Owned and Publicly-Owned Utilities’ Ability to Achieve the Conditions for Energy Democracy

Abstract

Electric utility (re)municipalization has gained traction as a strategy to shift from the paradigm of extractive fossil fuels and towards energy democracy. Across the world—from Berlin to Boulder—communities have initiated campaigns to take back their power from investor-owned utilities and formulate publicly owned and operated utilities. However, often public utilities have similar energy generation profiles to their privately owned counterparts (American Public Power Assocation, 2015). This thesis evaluates the ability of publicly owned utilities to provide energy democracy in comparison with investor-owned utilities. Energy democracy is a nascent but rapidly growing concept, coined in Germany around 2012, that emphasizes community control with the objective to serve a diverse local public renewable energy through democratic means (Angel, 2016; Giancatarino, 2013a; Yenneti & Day, 2015). This thesis builds on the work of scholars and practitioners within the energy democracy field to formulate a theoretical basis for energy democracy. The theory builds out the technological, political, and economic conditions necessary to achieve energy democracy. Five utilities in three states—Virginia, Ohio, and Nebraska—were selected as case studies to represent a range of regulatory, political, and geographic contexts. Data was gathered through 25 in-depth, semi-structured interviews as well as additional primary and secondary sources. Results showed that public utilities met more of the conditions for energy democracy than investor-owned utilities, but still fall short in many respects. However, their structures provide a better platform to change their orientation to an equitable, community-controlled utility. The results of this thesis not only identify what principles of energy democracy currently exist in public utilities, but also provide strategies to reorient and rebuild public utilities with strong foundations in energy democracy. By looking to the strengths and pitfalls of these studied public utilities, energy democracy activists who take on (re)municipalization campaigns can intentionally build out energy democracy and create a more just energy future.