Local Energy Rules

It’s no secret that electric vehicles have gone mainstream. From quarter to quarter, U.S. sales numbers consistently hover near or above record levels. Cities are trading in their gas-powered fleet vehicles and buses. And major auto manufacturers are planning for an electrified future. But the shift toward electric vehicles means more than cleaner, greener transportation. It offers an opportunity...

A citizen-led effort to establish in a city-run electric utility in the small northeast Iowa community of Decorah is picking up steam, with advocates — including some local officials — forecasting significant local economic growth powered by the transition. Decorah, with about 8,000 residents, is tucked in the northwest corner of Iowa just south of the Minnesota border. It’s best known as home to...

The combination of falling prices and rising interest put rooftop solar on a strong trajectory. But even as solar goes mainstream, it’s tough for consumers to tell which installer, which panels, and which financing is right for them. There has been little transparency in solar pricing, and consumers without technical expertise have a tough time shopping around. It’s a barrier to widespread solar a...

Experts predict a dramatic transformation of the U.S. transportation system will take hold in the coming decade. Karl Popham, who manages emerging technologies and electric vehicles at Austin Energy, expects major disruption too, fueled mainly by a distinct shift in how drivers view auto ownership. For decades, the marketplace has nurtured a “single-car ownership” model, built around the idea that...

An innovative group purchasing program in Boulder County, Colorado, put hundreds of electric vehicles on local roads and sparked the addition of more than 1 megawatt of rooftop solar in its first two years. Now, the initiative is a springboard for efforts nationwide to allow consumers to seize control of their clean energy future. The Boulder County project was the first in the country to offer du...

Is the U.S. on the cusp of a clean energy revolution that will fundamentally change how we live, work, and get around? That’s exactly what entrepreneur and lecturer Tony Seba argues in his book, Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation. His multi-pronged predictions include: all new energy will be provided by solar or wind, all new mass-market vehicles will be electric, and all of these vehic...

Fast-improving technology and growing consumer interest continue to put momentum behind the clean energy transition. Unlike utilities and other industry players that have largely ignored growth opportunities as market dynamics shift, a coalition of independent solar companies is harnessing its combined power to command more influence in the marketplace. Amicus Solar Cooperative formed in Colorado...

New Hampshire, home to some of the highest utility costs in the nation, could be fertile ground for community energy projects that promote lower-cost, renewable generation — especially after investors in one shared solar array pioneered a strategy to promote greater local ownership. Regulatory and legal roadblocks forced solar advocates in Keene to develop a comprehensive framework for adding a 43...

A growing number of small- and mid-size communities are harnessing their shared market power to promote local renewable energy. Using a state policy called community choice aggregation, these communities can unseat powerful monopoly utilities and seize greater control over their energy futures by choosing their electricity suppliers or generating their own power. Community choice aggregation — a s...

Rochester, Minnesota is known worldwide as the home of the Mayo clinic. And in recent years, its leaders have turned their attention to charting sustainable, responsible growth, including in energy with its own municipal utility. This Southeastern Minnesota city has extra flexibility in calling its own shots and recirculating a greater portion of its residents’ electricity dollars within the commu...

New England offers some of the nation’s biggest incentives for renewable energy generation, but high upfront costs and complicated financing mean many residents are still missing out on the opportunity to go solar. But one cooperative, with a series of pioneering programs, is beginning to change that. Co-op Power, headquartered in Massachusetts, has steadily built up its credentials over the past...

The city of Minneapolis has earned wide reaching praise for its innovative, first in the nation partnership with a pair of local utilities formed to advance ambitious goals, to reduce emissions, energy consumption, and more. Two years in, the clean energy partnership is more than a novel tool to propel sensible energy policy. It offers lessons in how cities can better manage their energy futures....

A widening chasm between what customers want and what Santa Fe’s electric utility delivers is bolstering a campaign to rejigger power production and distribution, possibly putting the city itself in charge. The municipalization campaign, years in the making, comes as the Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) leans on a long-term strategy that shortchanges renewables, includes shaky financial...

On June 17, John Farrell delivered a keynote address to the annual Midwest Energy Fair in Custer, Wisconsin. In this presentation, John detailed the growth of renewable energy and how new technologies and smart policies can lead to the downfall of the monopoly electric utility. https://ilsr.org/articles/video-the-coming-of-energy-democracy-midwest-renewable-energy-fair/

“We just need to become the Ben and Jerry’s of the utility world!” So said Mary Powell, CEO and president of Green Mountain Power, as she announced in 2014 that her electric utility had just earned B Corp certification, making it one of more than 1,700 companies in the world committed to rigorous standards. https://ilsr.org/articles/mountains-beyond-mountains-how-green-mountain-power-became-more-t...

Incentives designed to make rooftop solar feasible for a wider range of consumers are under attack nationwide, threatening new solar development as well as the consumers that already have rooftop panels. The staunchest opponents? Utilities who say, despite a growing body of research to the contrary, that rooftop solar hurts other ratepayers and their bottom lines. In particular, utilities have rai...

A surge of interest in residential solar arrays threatens traditional utilities’ outdated business model of selling more and more electricity, prompting them to adopt a controversial fee that hurts efficiency and diminishes long-range cost savings — even for themselves. Mandatory fixed fees on utility bills force consumers to pay up no matter how much, or how little, electricity they use. Utilitie...

Andy Johnson works with the soil. When younger, he served in Peace Corps in Central America for three years, working on conservation practices. Then he worked in the Natural Resource Conservation Service for years, the same agency that his father Paul Johnson headed by appointment from Bill Clinton in 1993.  After moving back to northeast Iowa in 2007, he started farming christmas trees and grass-...

When people pay their electric bill to an investor-owned utility such as Minnesota’s Xcel Energy, they are generating energy for themselves, but the profit and wealth accrues to the utility’s investors. But now, customers have an opportunity to buy in. Community solar programs are popping up rapidly across the country, offering electric customers an opportunity to own a slice of solar energy produ...

Electric cooperatives arose from New Deal legislation that provided government-backed low-interest loans to bring electricity to rural areas that for-profit companies wouldn’t serve in the 1930s. They were engines of the rural economy. But today they face unique challenges, including a disproportionate reliance on coal-fired power, often purchased on decades-long contracts. Additionally, even thou...

It’s not sexy. But it can make you warmer. It can even make you cooler. On-bill financing provides loans for energy efficiency improvements through the local utility company, paid back with energy savings on monthly electric (or gas) bills. And it’s a powerful tool for simplifying the financing for energy savings, and for making home comfort and lower bills available to those without the credit to...

Former CEO Dwight Brown did a number on the Cobb Electric Membership Corporation (EMC). Cobb EMC serves around 175,000 member-owners just outside of Atlanta, Ga., and is one of 900 member-owned electric cooperatives in the United States. From the late 1990s on, the co-op’s members lost nearly $400 million dollars to Brown’s for-profit Cobb Energy, a shell entity Brown engineered to drain money fro...

ILSR’s John Farrell was a plenary speaker at the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association’s 2016 annual conference in Boston, MA. The conference was held from March 8th through the 10th and focused on advancing the adoption of sustainable energy practices by bringing over 3,500 renewable energy professionals together. John’s opening plenary pinpointed key challenges of our current centralized ener...

In 2014, Chris Villarreal helped write the white paper, Microgrids: A Regulatory Perspective. As a regulatory analyst with the California Public Utilities Commission, he outlined the regulatory questions of microgrid development at a time when the state was mulling over how to allow more distributed, renewable energy come onto the grid. The questions weren’t small or easy to answer. Microgrids nat...

Most microgrids today are single buildings that rely on diesel generators to run when the grid is out. They’re simple backup, redundant power. But some more advanced microgrids, such as the Clean Coalition’s planned community microgrids, are looking into the future, when multiple sources of generation can support a community of homes and businesses. https://ilsr.org/articles/clean-coalition-podcas...