November 2020 marked the end of a 10-year battle, between Xcel and Boulder, Colorado, on who would provide power for the area. Frustrated with the pace of the energy transition, customers were convinced a municipalization could get faster results for renewable sources. El Paso Electric’s customers had similar concerns and were looking to do the same in their area. Earlier this year, policies up for a vote included one that urged the city of El Paso to “employ all available efforts to convert El Paso Electric to municipal ownership.” El Paso Electric made it clear they did not support the municipalization efforts stated within the Climate Charter.
Overall, communities want to support clean energy but are unaware of the time, money and assets required to convert to municipal ownership. In the end, the city of Boulder agreed to continue with Xcel as their electricity provider. Truly in the last two decades, only 12 communities have municipalized, Ursula Schryver, of the American Public Power Association said. Are they providing more power from renewable energy than their investor-owned counterparts? Have they avoided rate hikes and increased gas prices?
In Maine, utilities CMP and Versant are facing competition from consumer-owned Pine Tree Power. “Public power utilities take a longer-term view,” Bill Dunn, a supporter of Pine Tree Power. “Investor-owned utilities, they earn the money by investing in transmission, and very few outages are caused by outages on the transmission system, they’re caused by outages on the distribution system,” Dunn added. Speaking of outages, Pine Tree Power points to FEMA as one of the advantages to having a consumer-owned utility. In the event of a natural disaster, Pine Tree would be able to receive assistance from the federal agency.
Maine Affordable Energy Coalition, said in a statement, “There is absolutely nothing in the Pine Tree Power referendum that would guarantee more reliable service or lower rates. All they do is make promises that a state-run power company will somehow do a better job restoring after a storm.”
Those for and against have taken sides but what do the facts reveal about different ownership types for utilities? Are the pros outweighing the cons or vice versa?
