“DID YOU KNOW?” Investor-owned electric utilities

Did you know that private investor-owned electric utilities (IOUs) are responsible for about two-thirds of all national electricity sales?

For years these profit driven utilities have waged a relentless campaign to undermine the decentralized, justice-centered approach to energy generation and distribution. Giving up their monopoly-like power is not an easy thing to do. As the chart below shows, despite having over 11x’s more publicly owned not-for-profit utilities across the U.S, there are over four and half million more residents powered by a relative handful of investor owned utilities. It is clear that there is a concentration of power, literally and figuratively, shaping our energy system. 

But ultimately, the top-down centralized model, and infrastructure, is decaying and outdated. A distributed energy system is the most reliant and climate resilient energy system we can build for our future, especially to protect our communities. Continuing down the path of a centralized grid keeps our islands vulnerable to the worst of predicted natural disasters for our islands. 

Take the tragic and devastating impacts of Hurricane Maria on thousands of island residents in Puerto Rico, in 2017. Nearly three thousand deaths, according to a study commissioned by the Puerto Rican government, with many of those deaths the direct result of a lack of electricity that left residents without power for medical equipment, food, water, and shelter for months after the hurricane. “The storm laid bare the vulnerabilities of our transmission and distribution system and an electricity model,” explains lawyer and environmental justice advocate Ruth Santiago. “The U.S. colonial relation to Puerto Rico—Black and Brown people—has created conditions of dependence on centralized, fossil-fired generation that dramatically amplified the impact of the storm and resulted in the death of so many Puerto Ricans.” 

We have a lot to learn from these impacts, especially two telling truths.

The first is that increasing reliance on industrial-scale remote sources, with major ecological footprints, of electricity and long-distance transmission infrastructure, puts residents at risk. It is the wrong strategy for mitigating the impacts of climate change—it actually amplifies them. The second is that low-income communities and communities of color—those with the least resources and most at risk from electricity shut offs—bear the brunt of the failures of centralized energy systems, intensifying the racialized impacts of these failures.

In short, our just transition and climate justice advocacy is critical in accounting for the many ways that our corporate, centralized utility system does not qualify as a “solution” to the climate crisis. A different transition to distributed community-scale renewable energy is desperately needed. We must keep demanding justice and equity in our clean energy solutions.