Public Power versus Privately Owned Power Generation and Distribution.

This is a short diary on the issue of public power. When I worked on the 2001 San Francisco public power campaign (as part of the Labor Task Force for Public Power) we did a lot of research in state and out of state on how publicly owned utilities (as in "owned by public entities" not companies that issue stock owned by individual members of the public) we discovered something awesome: on average, public power entities provided power cheaper than regulated monopoly private utilities.

This even included public power utilities that had to purchase power on the wholesale market, which, as many of you know, saw prices over $700 per MWhr during the worst of the crisis.

I believe that public power is still on the agenda as a commodity such as electrical power should not be in the hands of profiteers. Those of us at left-atomics.blogspot.com are strong advocates of power generation and grid nationalization.

From the American Public Power Association:

Public power is a collection of more than 2,000 community-owned electric utilities, serving over 44 million people or about 14 percent of the nation's electricity consumers.

Public power utilities are operated by local governments to provide communities with reliable, responsive, not-for-profit electric service. Public power utilities are directly accountable to the people they serve through local elected or appointed officials.

Some of the nation's largest cities – Los Angeles, San Antonio, Seattle and Orlando – operate publicly owned electric utilities, but many public power communities are small with their utilities serving 3,000 or fewer customers.

44 million Americans! This needs to be expanded by mass-action, united front community based campaigns. We need to bring as much generation and gird operations under public control as soon as possible to eliminate the ability of private corporation to black mail our country again like they did to California 6 years ago.

One of the nice things about public power is the ability to decide energy policy by public mandate and discussion, not left in the hands of those rich enough to own enough shares.

While you all know that I think publically owned and operated nuclear power plants would solve the electrical energy crisis in the US, at least it would be a public debate with actual consequences.

David Walters