Some of the most powerful gatekeepers of the clean energy transition are almost completely unknown to the public.
I’m talking about public utility commissioners. In every U.S. state, these individuals regulate for-profit monopoly utilities, also called “investor-owned utilities,” on behalf of the public. More than two-thirds of U.S. electricity customers are served by investor-owned utilities, so there’s a good chance that a public utility commission (PUC) is overseeing the energy decisions where you live. But too often, their operations are cloaked in arcane language and procedures, and they remain inaccessible to the very communities they are tasked with serving.
That’s a problem because these utility regulators wield tremendous leverage over how quickly or slowly a state can transition from fossil fuels to clean energy for the power sector, transportation and buildings. They can approve or block the stuff that needs to get built to deliver a clean, electrified future, from renewable plants and batteries to transmission lines to electric-vehicle charging infrastructure. They also get to decide matters crucial to a just transition, such as what a utility owes to coal-plant communities after those facilities shut down.
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“It’s these folks that really are holding all the cards,” said Logan Burke, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy and one of the few people advocating for customers at the utility commission in Louisiana. “Nobody knows who they are, and that has to change, especially if we’re going to make any real headway in reducing energy burdens and greenhouse gases in our state.”
Numerous obstacles dissuade people from engaging with their PUCs. For one thing, their regulatory proceedings tend to be extremely boring. If you’re hoping to skip the meeting and just look for information online, well, many PUC websites take their design cues from the early-2000s internet — and don’t even ask about mobile optimization.
The good news is that when communities push past the obstacles and participate in their PUC’s decision-making process, they can win big for the cause of a cleaner, more just energy system.
“People have levers of democratic accountability over who is regulating the utility service that they get, no matter what the business model is,” said David Pomerantz, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a philanthropically supported utility watchdog group. (Municipal utilities and electric cooperatives, by the way, usually are not subject to PUC oversight, but they have other forms of democratic governance.)
If you want to get involved and exert more say over your energy future, here are a few ways to get started.
Figure out who your public utility commissioners are
Can you name your public utility commissioners? How about just one of them? The vast majority of Americans can’t, and that’s understandable for such an obscure and technocratic institution.
On the other hand, it’s wild that a handful of people with so much power to speed or throttle the buildout of clean energy operate almost entirely outside the public view. PUCs typically consist of three to five regulators per state, so each of their votes goes a long way. These regulators should be public figures whose votes spur discussion and debate among constituents.
You can help make that happen by finding out who these people actually are in your state. The names and bios of your commissioners are just a few clicks away. Sometimes these organizations are called corporation commissions, or public service commissions, but Googling your state and “utility commission” should get you to the right page.
To get you started, here are links to the regulators overseeing the five most populous states:
- California
- Texas
- Florida
- New York
- Pennsylvania
Get involved in choosing your commissioners
There are three ways that someone ends up in the powerful role of utility regulator. They may be:
- Hand-picked by the governor (37 states, sometimes with input from the legislature).
- Elected by the people (11 states, but New Mexico voters approved a ballot measure revoking their ability to elect commissioners, so that state will switch to governor-appointed regulators on January 1, 2023. A lawsuit filed by Indigenous nonprofits alleges that the ballot language was misleading because it did not mention that the measure would strip voters of the ability to choose regulators).
- Selected by state legislators (two states, South Carolina and Virginia).
Each selection method lends a certain flavor to the state’s PUC and creates different opportunities for advocacy.
In states that elect their regulators, voters can choose between candidates who either want to support a transition to clean energy or do not. These races typically fly under the radar, so grassroots organizing for a candidate and mobilizing turnout can have a real impact — but so can campaign donations from utilities. But dark money in elections notwithstanding, elected regulators are directly accountable to the public.
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