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The push for a Green New Deal could forge a path for “energy democracy.”
The debate over the Green New Deal is growing more intense, but generating more heat than light. In some quarters, there is outright hysteria. (“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is coming for your hamburgers!”) But there is also a misperception across the political spectrum that the transition to green energy requires top-down, centralized control, as Mitch McConnell recently claimed.
In fact, the transition to renewable energy envisioned in the Green New Deal holds the potential for a radical decentralization of power. That’s the promise of “energy democracy,” which could put power, quite literally, in the hands of the people. It is the opposite of our current system, a centralized monolith that produces huge profits (and outsized political clout) for the handful of corporations that control it.
Instead, energy democracy can return power generation to local or community control. It can bring needed jobs and investment to communities that have paid dearly for fossil-fueled power. That includes the scarred mountain towns of Appalachia, the low-income neighborhoods shadowed by power plants and refineries, and communities being displaced by sea-level rise. Thankfully, these impacted communities are already sowing the seeds of energy democracy.
For example, in the working-class city of Richmond, California, community groups have organized a “green zone” for locally owned, renewable energy projects in the shadows of a Chevron refinery. And in nearby Oakland, the People Power Solar Cooperative has created a community-owned solar project where residents pay less than the utility rate for electricity. Additional cost savings are reinvested into new cooperative energy projects.
In the Mississippi Delta, residents are reclaiming community control of rural electric cooperatives. Created as part of the original New Deal, those member-owned co-ops have lost their way, behaving more like investor-owned utilities. Rather than serve the people, they charge top dollar for dirty energy while making decisions behind closed doors. So groups like One Voice are fighting for more accountability, transparency and community control—and training residents to run for co-op boards.
And in North Philadelphia, a group called Serenity Soular has piloted solar installation training programs, and plans to create a worker cooperative owned by women and people of color. In this way, the community can build wealth and address racial inequity in the green energy jobs boom.
CCAs aim to break the power monopoly by allowing local governments to leverage purchasing power and shop around for better rates, greener energy, and potentially invest in new decentralized distribution systems.
The Green New Deal can build on these efforts, but that will require new strategies, governing structures, institutions and investments. One promising model is Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), which has been adopted by seven states. CCAs aim to break the power monopoly by allowing local governments to leverage purchasing power and shop around for better rates, greener energy, and potentially invest in new decentralized distribution systems. If residents are fairly represented at the governing table, CCAs can transform how energy planning and decision-making is made.
The fossil-fuel era has seen ever-greater concentrations of money and power in the hands of a few, while damaging the lives of many. It is time for that era to end. The Green New Deal could usher in a new day of people power, by bringing broad-based prosperity to those who have been left behind. That’s a new deal we can all get behind.