Source: Why Your Utility Company Sucks | The New Republic
Electricity utility governance in the U.S. is built on a bargain struck more than a century ago with a burgeoning class of robber barons. In exchange for submitting to state-level regulation, highly concentrated investor-owned utilities—fierce competitors with public power providers—would receive a monopoly over massive service areas. Public utility commissions (or PUCs, as they’re still generally known) would ensure those for-profit utilities provided reliable and affordable service, and executives could use the rates charged to their customers to fund new infrastructure, like generation plants and power lines. That bargain also served to legitimate the then-controversial idea that people deserved to get fabulously rich off providing an essential service.
There have been many changes to utility law in the intervening years, but problems remain endemic. As comedian John Oliver noted in a recent Last Week Tonight segment, “Just Google your utility company right now and the word scandal, and chances are they’ve gotten into some major trouble.” Ohio’s FirstEnergy is the subject of an ongoing FBI probe over a $60 million bribery scandal in which the company essentially bought seats in the state legislature to funnel itself a $1 billion bailout. The groups petitioning the FTC point out that such dynamics have also slowed down the energy transition: Utility companies, they write, have blocked out third-party solar providers, charged higher rates to ratepayers who install solar panels on their homes, and failed to provide such solar-using ratepayers with hook-ups to the grid.
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