Background Information on Public Power

  The Post-Standard news article below shows how public power is moving forward in Central New York . Syracuse and Onondaga County should move forward on public power, too. Affordable energy from public power for residents and businesses will make the local economy far more prosperous.

  The magazine article by Howie Hawkins that follows provides background on the restructuring of utility regulation that led to the California energy crisis a few years ago and the raising of rates in New York, which were already the highest in the continental US. It also gives a general background on the proven track record of public power to provide affordable, reliable, and, increasingly, renewable energy.

Power Proposal Pushed

Syracuse Post-Standard

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Approval of a Nov. 8 referendum would allow the Cayuga County Public Utility Service Agency to offer lower-cost energy rates to county residents and industrial and commercial businesses.

The referendum calls for changing a 1984 local law to empower the agency to establish and operate a public power utility like the 51 agencies that operate in the state.

Approval of the measure would allow the agency to purchase power, promote development of alternative energy sources and negotiate with New York State Electric & Gas for the use or acquisition of its distribution system in the county, supporters of the referendum say.

Last year, Auburn residents approved a referendum creating a city power agency.

Herbert Marshall, chairman of the county power agency, and Vice Chairman John Montone talked about the county referendum in an interview with staff writer Scott Rapp on Monday. Montone, who lives in Auburn , runs the village of Solvay 's public utility operations.

Here are excerpts from that interview: Skeptics might ask why did it take 21 years for the county to change the 1984 law?

Marshall : "The laws have changed substantially as to what you can do to create this type of organization. Back when we (created the law) 21 years ago, the costs of doing something like this were totally prohibitive. . . . The laws were written specifically to totally protect the utilities, and since that time the laws have been relaxed considerably to at least help encourage municipalities to get into some form of the distribution of (power)."

Bottom line, would this referendum allow the agency to buy power and then sell it at a discounted rate?

Montone: "Yes, and to possibly purchase the distribution system. . . . This referendum gives us the ability to negotiate

with NYSEG to buy power, to generate power and to sell power throughout the county to residents, commercial and industrial customers."

Do you see this helping the county's economic development efforts?

Marshall : "One of the chief economic problems with New York state is that we're one of the highest-priced utility users in the country. Hopefully, this would make Cayuga County more competitive in their utility rates, whether it's electric or whether it's gas."

Montone: "A feasibility study will come of this if this law is passed . . . to go out and look at the system and see how much we can purchase the power for. . . . We're hoping to bring (that price) down, and that's going to create some economic development, it's going to help the farming community and it's going to help the city residents and the county residents."

Will this benefit all county residents?

Marshall : "This could conceivably turn into a benefit for every county resident."

Like the power agencies in Skaneateles or Solvay?

Marshall: "Yes, but it would be a much bigger undertaking here because it's a lot larger area, and number two, because we don't have the infrastructure in place to start out like they do."

When do you see this happening?

Marshall : "I think we need to go one step at a time. The first step is to get the referendum passed, then the organization will be legitimate and then the (agency) needs to prioritize. I think the (proposed) manure digester (plant in Sennett) would be the first step, and that would get us into the actual business phase of it. We would have a method of generating power and then we would have a method of distributing the power. And then you would go on from there. The timetable will be mandated by what we can do with the purchase of electricity, who wants to deal with us, what things are available."

Will there be a paid position to run the agency?

Marshall : "There is not going to be a paid position while we're in this stage of it. When we get into the actual distribution, it will have to evolve into a position of some kind - either a position or a contractual arrangement with somebody who can do that."

Are there any drawbacks to passing the referendum?

Montone: "Honestly, no. As far as the referendum goes, it's an all-positive thing."

Marshall : "I really don't think there's any drawbacks. There's going to be a lot of time involved . . . but that's not necessarily a drawback. I think the whole thing is very positive."

What do you say to critics who are wondering what this will cost to get going?

Montone: "Well, we're not inventing the wheel here. Many of the communities that are in public power have been in it over 100 years. We know it works. It's a proven system, and all we have to do is make it work in this community."

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Versions of the following article appeared in Synthesis/Regeneration (Spring 2002) and G (Winter 2003).

Solar Power through Public Power

By Howie Hawkins, Syracuse Greens

Energy deregulation in US has utterly failed to deliver on its promise of lower prices for consumers due to more competitive markets. To the contrary, prices are soaring due to the cartelization of energy suppliers and the merger wave among utilities. Almost every state has felt the impact of wholesale electric prices manipulated by a small group of energy giants to create artificial shortages that sent spot market prices soaring by 500 to 1000 percent last year.

Energy deregulation in most states was rhetorical cover for a massive bailout of the bad investments of investor-owned utilities (IOUs) in nuclear power plants and so-called “independent power producers,� which are often different subsidiaries of the same parent holding companies. The total bill for this bailout if “deregulation� is carried through in all the states with nuclear power plants has been estimated at $500 billion to $1 trillion dollars, far surpassing the record-breaking savings and loan bailout.

While serving as cover for the nuclear bailout, deregulation is also in the process of transforming electric power from a publicly-regulated service into a market and profit driven commodity. Deregulation encompasses wholesale energy prices, increasingly retail energy prices, nuclear power plant oversight, and incentives and standards for energy efficiency and renewable energy production. Under this new regulatory regime, energy conservation has plummeted, renewable energy production has stagnated, nuclear waste and fossil fuel air pollution continues, deteriorating old nukes continue to operate despite dangerous mechanical flaws, and energy prices surge.

The general public is raging over skyrocketing utility rates and collection agency intimidation to collect on overdue utility bills. The environmentally conscious are upset that the limited progress on conservation, efficiency, and renewables that was made in the 1980s has been reversed in the deregulatory 1990s. Meanwhile, aging and therefore more accident-prone nuclear power plants receive financial bailouts, license extensions, and reduced Nuclear Regulatory Commission and public oversight and regulation. And fossil fuels remain the principal planned source of future transportation fuels as well as electric power generation while global warming continues without a serious public policy response.

Politically, the Democrats and Republicans are unalterably compromised by campaign contributions from the utility companies and their close allies in the banking industry. Bank financing charges for power plant construction amount to 40% of all utility costs. Historically, 60% of the entire underwriting business in the US has come from the utilities industry. The Democrats and Republicans don't want to these hands that feed them. If there ever was an issue where the Greens can take the lead, energy is that issue.

Bipartisan Deregulation

Energy deregulation has been building as a policy since the Carter administration. In 1978, Carter deregulated wholesale gas prices while prioritizing subsides for coal gassification and nukes over solar-based renewables. The Reagan administration removed most of the minimal federal tax credits for solar installations and subsidies weatherization of poor people's homes that had been part of Carter's energy policy.

At the end of the first Bush administration, the Energy Policy Act of 1992 was enacted to deregulate the market in interstate wholesaling of electricity and create the federal policy framework of incentives for state by state deregulation of utilities and the wave of utility mergers we have seen in the 1990s. Under the Clinton/Gore administration, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission promulgated in 1996 the regulations to implement the Energy Policy Act of 1992.

Then the states started deregulating. In 1996, the California state legislature adopted, with every single Democrat and Republican voting in favor, the deregulatory bill that led to the rate shock and service blackouts of 2000 and 2001. In New York , each IOU worked out their own special deregulatiion (and bailout) plan with the Public Service Commission with bipartisan agreement in the legislature not to intervene and legislate guidelines, resulting in a gutting of incentives for energy conservation and renewables and a massive bailout of utilities' nuclear plants. In every state that has deregulated, the plan has had overwhelming bipartisan support.

The California Rip-Off

The most dramatic example of the failure of energy deregulation is California , where surging utility rates and service blackouts have received national media coverage. The scale of this corporate crime is breathtaking. It rates as one of the greatest corporate rip-offs in history.

California 's 1996 deregulation bill forced ratepayers to fork over $28.5 billion to bail out the IOUs for their failed investments in nuclear power plants. In return, lobbyists for Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric, who spent $7.7 million to promote passage and implementation of deregulation, projected that utility rates would fall 25% due to increased competition among energy suppliers.

Instead, rates have soared. Out-of-state companies, most of them major gas suppliers, bought the power plants that California utilities divested as part of the deregulation plan. These gas, and now power plant companies, turned around and jacked up their gas and electric prices. In the first three months of 2001, California spent $3 billion buying electricity from plants that its utilities had sold to out-of-state companies for only $2.4 billion. That $3 billion utility bill was as much as it would have cost to buy all of the power generating plants operating in California .

Consumer and environmental groups accurately predicted at the beginning of deregulation this disaster that has befallen on California over the last year. Commenting on the 1996 California deregulation bill, Dan Berman, who spoke on this subject at the 1997 Green Congress, asked in his 1996 book, Who Owns the Sun? , "What will happen when the new, unrelated 'independent power producers' of cheap electric power fired by combined-cycle gas turbines pass on whopping rate increases to the public as the price of natural gas soars? Will big industry come weeping to the public, hat in hand, as the savings-and-loan investors did?" Well, they are now.

Knowing what was coming, consumer and environmental groups collected 700,000 signatures to put an initiative on the 1998 ballot to repeal the 1996 deregulation bill. PG&E, SoCalEd, and SDG&E spent $40 million against the consumer/environmentalist coalitions' $1 million to decisively defeat the initiative, 73-27 percent. A similar initiative to repeal deregulation in Massachusetts was defeated on the same day, again by overwhelming IOU money.

So deregulation went forward in California . The utilities were encouraged by the legislation to divest themselves of their power generators and become pure distribution companies, although both distribution and power generation companies could be owned by the same utility holding companies. In theory, the power generators would be bought by small entrepreneurial firms, who would compete on price to sell their power to the distribution companies. In reality, only half of the generators have been divested and most of the power generators that have been sold were bought by a relatively few big energy supply companies, including Enron, Duke Power, Dynergy, Reliant, Calpine, and Southern Company.

Meanwhile, a major part of the power supply based on natural gas was controlled by a veritable cartel out-of-state, largely Texas-based suppliers, including again Enron, Duke Power, Dynergy, and Reliant, which left California utilities dependent on the spot market when demand was high and prices soared. The evidence shows that these companies controlled enough of the market to force prices up by withholding supplies until they got their price.

These four companies happen to be among George W. Bush's biggest campaign backers. Public Citizen has documented that these four, plus five other power companies and related trade associations, gave over $4 million to Bush and the Republican campaign committees in the last election. These contributions explain why Bush refused to re-regulate gas and electric prices when they soared, why he openly opposes the Kyoto Accords on global warming, and why his proposed energy policy is so heavily oriented to expanding the use of fossil fuels as well as nuclear power. Public Citizen also notes that these companies' profits soared last year: Enron up 42 percent, Reliant up 55 percent, Dynergy up 210%, Calpine up 420%.

No wonder profits were up when rates started doubling and then tripling in the summer of 2000. San Diego Gas and Electric was the first utility allowed by the Public Utilities Commission to let consumer prices deregulate because it had received its full bailout for its "stranded costs."� Immediately, consumer rates soared.

Meanwhile, consumer rates for PG&E and SoCalEd were still capped. But Enron and company were jacking up their spot market prices for gas and electricity, causing these distribution companies to lose billions of dollars over the summer and into the winter. Clinton was still in office but refused to use the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's power to cap wholesale prices. Wholesale prices were deregulated by a bill signed by George Bush Sr. at the end of his administration and implemented by Clinton/Gore, but FERC still has residual power to impose caps if prices rise too high. But both Clinton and now Bush Jr. have refused to use that power.

"The Muggers Themselves Got Mugged"�

The distribution companies in California have already received $20 billion in the bailout money from ratepayers. Ratepayers will be paying for that for years to come because much of it was financed with state revenue bonds that enabled the utilities to get paid now while the ratepayers pay for years with interest going to the financial firms that underwrote the bonds. The distribution companies transferred that $20 billion windfall to their parent companies. When the supplier companies jacked up prices the last year, the distribution companies came up short of cash. PG&E sought refuge in bankruptcy court last April, but not before giving raises and bonuses to 6,000 management employees just hours before the bankruptcy papers were filed in court. Consumer advocates say that PG&E's parent utility holding company should cover the cash shortfall of the distribution subsidiary from its $30 billion in assets, much of it based on the recently acquired nuclear bailout money. But the courts have so far said that money is gone as far as the distribution companies are concerned.

Meanwhile, PG&E's holding company has been on a spending spree, using the nuclear bailout money to buy power generators around the world, from New England to New Zealand . Just as PG&E sold off some of its own generators at bargain basement prices to other energy holding companies, PG&E has been buying discounted power plants from other states that are deregulating and having utilities divest their generators. So the parent holding companies' production companies are making out like bandits by jacking up prices to the distribution companies.

Harvey Rosenfeld, President of the California-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, says this corporate crime is a case where 'the muggers themselves got mugged.' First the utilities mugged the ratepayers for nuclear bailouts under the name of deregulation and handed the windfall over to their parent companies. Then the supplier companies manipulate the market to mug the distribution companies. The distribution companies go to bankruptcy court for protection. Meanwhile, the holding companies, which own the profitable supply companies while they siphon assets out of the distribution companies they also own, get richer, taking in the money from both ends. Now the distribution subsidiaries are asking for a second bailout from the public.

The response from many Californians has been to demand a public takeover of the utility industry. San Francisco has a public power initiative on the ballot this November. Conservative San Diego, a Republican and military base stronghold, is moving to create a city-owned power company. Legislation has been introduced in the California legislature to put all the utilities into a state power authority. It is easy to see why Californians are moving toward public power. While customers of investor-owned utilities (IOUs) experienced rate shock and service blackouts, the customers of California 's two big public power systems, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, had stable rates and no blackouts.

Public Power Costs Less

Nationwide, the 2008 public power systems in the country delivered power to residential customers for 18 percent less than IOUs during 1999. The average price was 7.2 cents per kilowatt our for public power systems and 8.5 cents per kilowatt hour for IOUs.

Historically, public power has delivered power for about 25 percent less. Two factors account for the recent decline in public power's price advantage. One is the public takeover of the Long Island utility, which had the highest rates in the country due to the disastrous investment of billions into the Shoreham nuclear power plant that never went on line because it was impossible to evacuate Long Island in the event of an accident. The new Long Island Power Authority is huge, accounting for 6 percent of public power customers nationwide, so its high prices have lowered the public power average. Second, deregulation of wholesale markets and the concentration of power generation in fewer energy giants has made public power systems more vulnerable to energy supplier market manipulations.

Most of the 2000 public power systems are small municipally owned companies. They don't have the market power that the energy giants do. Under deregulation, IOU mergers have accelerated. With 56 mergers since the Energy Policy Act of 1992 and with the rate tripling since that legislation was implemented by the Clinton/Gore administration in 1996, Wall Street analysts predict that the current 239 IOUs will merge into no more than 40 giant utility holding companies by 2005 and perhaps as few as a dozen giant global utility holding companies.

Nevertheless, public power systems are still able to keep their prices lower for two basic reasons. First, they don't have to pay dividends to stockholders. They aim to run at cost, without a markup to cover profits. Second, most public power systems are democratic. Their boards are elected at public elections, or at least appointed by elected politicians. The ultimate boss is the consumer served by the utility, not the shareholders seeking to maximize profits. So public power executives cannot get away with kind of looting that IOU executives have.

The responsiveness of public power systems to consumer concerns has also been a reason why public power systems have led the way in energy conservation and renewable energy production. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) provides a case in point. With the antinuclear movement instigating a broad citizen movement that petitioned for an initiative referendum, SMUD voters decided in 1987 in a public referendum that they wanted to shut down SMUD's financially disastrous Rancho Seco nuclear power plant. SMUD then redirected utility investments toward energy conservation and renewables. Today, SMUD has paid down its nuclear debt and is one of the leading utilities in the world in energy efficiency and solar-based, renewable energy production. That is why they were able to provide low-cost, uninterrupted service during last winter's California energy crisis.

Nuke Fire Precipitated Blackouts

California had no shortage of power capacity before the blackouts hit last winter. The capacity in California was 40,000 megawatts. The highest peak demand ever was 33,000 megawatts. But during the winter, many generators were down for repairs. Energy activists believe the confluence of repair shut downs was no accident. Energy activists allege they were scheduled down for repairs deliberately to create a power shortage and higher prices. In any case, there was still enough power to avoid blackouts until a February 3 fire at the San Onofre Unit Three nuke near Los Angeles knocked that plant off line. Instantly, one quarter of the state's reactor capacity was gone and the blackouts began. One million homes lost power in the blackouts that followed.

The corporate media has grossly under-reported the role of the San Onofre nuke fire in precipitating last winter's blackouts. The NRC has not been forthcoming with reports about how it happened. But the incident does show how insane the new push for nuclear power is. Under the best of circumstances, a new nuke would take 5-10 years to come on line. When all subsidies and lifetime costs are figured in, the cost of nuclear electricity is, to be very generous, at least 10 cents per kilowatt hour. Meanwhile, wind power generators can be built today in a few months and bring power to homes, commerce, and industry for 2.5 cents a kilowatt hour.

Deregulation a Disaster Worldwide

California 's energy crisis was the most dramatic, but it was not the only one. 3.7 million families faced utility cut-offs last April across the country due to the much higher costs of gas heating during the previous winter. Many state regulations prevent cut-offs during the cold winter months, but when April rolled around this year, so did the threatening tactics of utility bill collectors.

Here in upstate New York, Niagara Mohawk (NiMo) got a $5 billion bailout to cover the so-called "stranded costs" of the $8 billion Nine Mile Point 2 nuke, which originally was project to cost $300 million, and contracts with "independent power producers" that guaranteed an above market rate for energy. It so happens that the man who engineered the independent power producer contracts in the Cuomo administration is now President of Niagara Mohawk. He got the Public Service Commission to bailout his company for buying into a policy he created. He also lives in a public power community, where he pays a fraction of the rate that his customers pay for residential service.

NiMo's approved deregulation plan built the bailout into the transmission and distribution charges, while electric rates were frozen for five years. But gas prices were deregulated and, like many other states, gas heating charges hit consumers hard last winter. Now NiMo is squeezing consumers to catch up. The Syracuse Green Party office is sublet from the South Side Newsstand, a book store and resource center in the black community. The Greens pay rent, the store covers utilities. After last winter's surge in prices, the Newsstand was $4,500 behind in payments to NiMo. We had an agreement to pay $500 on the 1 st and 15 th of each month to catch up. In August, I took the payment to a grocery store where many south siders pay their NiMo bills and supposedly get immediate credit. I got the bill stamped as paid on the 15th . On the 17th , NiMo's bill collecter showed up saying we were credited by NiMo on the 16 th and therefore had to pay $2,000 right then and there to keep the lights on. I stepped up the bill collector with the stamped bill and started arguing that NiMo was not living up to its deal. His bodyguard stepped up to me. The NiMo bill collectors need bodyguards as they go around to squeeze bill payments out of the community. We eventually got away with a $1000 payment we hustled up to keep the lights on for two more weeks. I'm $50 behind on my gas and electric bill from the winter. Under deregulation, I can choose my retail company, so I joined a buying co-op, which saves a little on the bill. NiMo still administers the billing and last week they demanded that the co-op throw me out of the co-op for being $50 in arrears. Almost everyone in town who couldn't keep up with last winter's rate shock can tell similar stories of NiMo's heavy handed bill collection tactics.

The same week we were being squeezed, NiMo announced that it was writing off a $44 million investment in Telergy, a local fiber optics company that has gone into the tank, and forgiving over $1 million in bills owed by Hotel Syracuse, a politically connected establishment downtown. Residential and small business ratepayers will have to cover those losses.

Deregulation has not only hurt consumers in the US . Alberta , Ontario , and other Canadian provinces saw a tripling of rates over night when retail prices were deregulated. The UK and Chile began privatizing and deregulating power utilities in the 1980s and those experiences should have shown the US and Canada why it was a disastrous policy. In both countries, the auctioning off of public power systems to private companies led to price rigging and gouging in deregulated markets, not lower prices. And it led to asset raiding. Power generators and transmission systems were auctioned off cheap to companies that them ran the utilities into ground. Now in the UK , the public clamoring to buy back deteriorated utilities from private companies that have milked them dry for profits without adequate reinvestment in maintenance.

South Africa is another country that has gone ahead with privatization and deregulation and experienced the same bad consequences. In response, a broad Anti-Privatization Forum has formed, a coalition encompassing many trade unions, civic organizations, and the socialist left. On August 21 this year, the movement for affordable public power had its first casualty. The electric company's hired guns shot a protesting young man dead. It happened in Sharpeville, the site of the infamous massacre of 21 peaceful anti-apartheid protests on March 19, 1960 that became a rallying cry for the anti-apartheid movement. This killing in Sharpeville is serving to rally opposition to privatization of the South African utility industry. The movement planned to bring their protests to the World Conference Against Racism in Durban at the end of August.

Solar Power through Public Power

The energy industry may have overreached with their deregulation schemes in the 1990s. The public is beginning to fight back. There are many lessons to be learned from the power struggle over power that goes back a century. The idea that electricity and gas should be commodities sold for profit instead of public goods provided at cost under democratic public control like water, roads, and schools has never been completely accepted in the US . 2008 public power systems, as well as 900 cooperatively owned systems, are testament to the fact that private IOUs never completely won out. Now a new movement for public power is emerging.

The Green Party, which is not compromised by the campaign contributions of utilities, their banks, and their energy suppliers, needs to be the electoral arm of this movement. And Greens are beginning to rise to this challenge. As Medea Benjamin, who has been named the Energy Spokesperson for the California Green Party, recently put it in a call for Greens to mobilize for a rally for Clean, Affordable Power under Local Public Control in Sacramento on September 9:

"As you well know, the Green Party has been on the forefront of promoting positive energy solutions in this state. We are the only party to have opposed deregulation while the Democrat and Republican legislators in Sacramento UNANIMOUSLY supported it. We worked hard to try to overturn deregulation through a citizen initiative. Our key values of ecological wisdom, grassroots democracy, decentralization and sustainability counter an energy fiasco that has been characterized by ecological destruction, top-down and corrupt politics, marginalization of local communities and disregard for the future environmental needs of this planet. We are the only party that includes in its platform a call for phasing out fossil fuels and nuclear energy, and replacing these with renewable energy, conservation and efficiency. And Greens are on the front lines in the statewide effort to take the profit motive out of our energy system and replace it with locally controlled, public power that would put the needs of Californians and our environment front and center where they should be!"

In New York , Greens are spearheading a Campaign for Affordable, Renewable, Public Power. The campaign has six policy goals:

•  Affordable Prices: All energy products are priced at the minimum level consistent with the costs of production and ecologically sound use.

•  Energy Lifelines: Each citizen is guaranteed a minimum fair share of energy regardless of ability to pay.

•  No Nukes: Rapid phase out of New York 's six nuclear power plants.

•  Renewable Energy: A rapid transition to clean, renewable energy sources, including wind power, solar-thermal, solar-electric, geothermal, biofuels, and solar-hydrogen fuels. Energy planning to rapidly replace imported, polluting, and nonrenewable nuclear and fossil fuels with indigenous, clean, and renewable energy sources.

•  Public Power: Conversion of investor-owned utilities into locally-owned and controlled Public Energy Districts (PEDs), which will coordinate statewide energy planning through a democratized New York Power Authority, whose board will be composed of representatives of the PEDs and at-large members elected at public elections. The natural energy resources of the New York State , as well as the production, transmission, and distribution infrastructure of energy, belong to all the people of New York State .

•  Freedom of Information: All information regarding the activities of every energy agency and all data on reserves and consumption is publicly available on a timely basis to facilitate the fullest possible public participation in the preparation of energy plans and to monitor their implementation.

The Campaign for Affordable, Renewable, Public Power will campaign for a public power system that is decentralized and democratic, with the following elements:

Public Energy Districts: Towns and cities, alone or in contiguous combination, will form their own local power company with the power to build, acquire (by eminent domain if necessary), and operate power generating and distribution facilities, and to issue revenue-producing bonds. Their boards will be elected by their workers (one-third of the seats) and the citizens of the public energy district (two-thirds of the seats).

State Energy Board: The state energy board will be composed of representatives elected by the Public Energy Districts boards (two-thirds) and representatives elected in public elections (one-third). It will take over governance of the New York Power Authority and transform it from a top-down, patronage-ridden, corporate-oriented agency to a democratic, competent, public interest-oriented agency. Its responsibilities will include:

•  Trusteeship of the state's natural energy resources

•  Operation of statewide energy infrastructure

•  State energy planning based on the coordination of local PED plans

•  Allocation of state energy research and development funding

The missing element in the California and New York campaigns is the national element. As long as local and even state public power systems are at the mercy of the ExxonMobils and Enrons for energy fuels and Wall Street for financing, the public power system will be dependent on the biggest financial and industrial corporations in the world who will use their tremendous economic power to extract the highest possible prices from the public power systems. So just as Greens in New York are calling for municipal utilities federated into a statewide public power system, Greens nationally should begin projecting the federation of statewide public power systems into a national public power system that will take over from the Enrons and ExxonMobils trusteeship of our natural energy resources, will have access to government financing that is not dependent on Wall Street, and is governed democratically from below.

In taking up this program, the Greens will be confronting some of the core pillars of US capitalism. But there is no way around it if we want an affordable and renewable energy system. Private industry has demonstrated its utter irresponsibility in pursuit of profit maximization. Their fossil fuels are heating up the planet. They are destroying local environments with their oil drilling and strip mining. And their nukes have left us a deadly legacy of nuclear waste that will last millions of years (Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years; as it decomposes, uranium-2345 is formed, which has a half-life of 710,000 years).

Private industry has shown itself utterly incapable of choosing the path of affordable, safe, renewable energy. Only through a public power system will the people have to power and freedom to choose the road to a sustainable, solar economy. That is one of the central goals that led to the creation of the Green Party. The deregulation-induced energy crisis now means it is time for Greens to act on that goal.