Americans owe monopoly energy companies upwards of $25 billion. What if we could pull off a massive mutual aid movement to pay off this debt in exchange for a just, resilient energy grid that serves us all?
Where are we now?
Utilities have been gouging us for years, but the extent of their grift–and the accompanying consumer debt and shutoffs–has reached an all time high in recent years. The trajectory of utility profits, and thus what we owe these monarchies monopolies, is rising as fast as global temperatures.
Shareholders are drooling over the AI boom and the sudden uptick in demand for electricity. And more people cranking up the A/C to compensate for data center heat islands? Cha-Ching! Between climate change and AI, utilities have all the justification they need to erect more energy infrastructure of every stripe: more gas, more transmission, and more renewables, too.
In all this windfall of new capital expenses, investors see both dollar signs and the ultimate trump card–a race to the bottom that pits states in competition with each other to offer the best economic handouts in exchange for a fairy tale of economic and job growth. Those tales, ironically, may be spun by the artificial bots themselves, justifying their energy and water appetites in a spiraling logic to nowhere, with no regard for the families who foot the bill.
Politicians and regulators alike have done basically nothing up to this point to hold monopoly utilities in check. With frustration with rising utility bills at an all-time-high, decision-makers are finally starting to feel the heat, even in red states, and know they need to do something. It’s all coming to an ugly head. Let’s force the jet-setting CEOs and Wall Street private equity firms back down to earth. We wield real power now, a hot iron to prod utilities and those whose campaigns they bankroll into real concessions.
What if we make a deal with the devil?
No one wants to hand the utilities more free money. But in the absence of good proposals to fully solve our energy affordability and shutoffs crises or slow climate change it’s time to put wild ideas on the table:
Here’s my pitch. We’ll start by making a down payment to build the remarkably cleaner, right-sized, more just energy system we need for the next century. We will be the people to rattle the sabers and embarrass the heck out of the utility kings, we will pay that $25 billion debt to zero and beat them to the punch.
Utilities have been sending us bogus bills for years. With no competition, it’s pretty easy to drum up more and more expenses to pass on to their customers. In fact, the worse they maintain their grid,the more incentive they have to build them back – re-stringing the wires that they’d hoped would snap in the storm. Letting it fall to ruins means they can charge us, their captive customers, even more. Each of us who is indentured to our monopoly IOU is paying at least $300 more each year than we should just to inflate their profit margins well above what investors would happily accept. Factor in the high price of debt financing and that utilities earn more money by increasing wasteful spending, and the true price tag is more like $500-$600 annually. That’s how much the rates of Georgia Power customers increased in just the last five years.
The utility kings owe us big time. Demanding 100% debt forgiveness would be a very “just and reasonable” ask. We could demand even more–reparations–and still stand on terra firma. And yet, I’m starting my proposal to enrich their royal families (or is it family royalties?) even more. Whaaaaa?! Is this seriously strategy, or satire? Or both? Perhaps.
Yes, what if those of us who live comfortably, but as less than royalty, flex our solidarity through the largest mutual aid program in the history of the world? This is skin in the game, our blaring message to elected officials and regulators that we are deadly f-ing serious and not backing down until we fundamentally rebuild this broken system and oust the utility kings for good. We throw the game of thrones back in their faces, the subjects mocking their overlords in one final act of capitulation. Their last laugh will come at a steep price. Who’s eating cake now? Huzzah!
If those of us who have the means covered the balances for one or two neighbors, we could lift the monumental weight and threat of a looming shutoff for all. (Or if Musk or Bezos agrees to single-handedly give a few percent of their wealth, we could skip this step.) And yeah, that money, absurdly, is going to go back to the utilities’ pockets. But this final submission comes with three significant strings:
The Strings
First–utilities and customers with the lowest rates, notably those pesky data centers but also general business and industrial customers, are going to jointly take responsibility for ensuring every single American has an energy bill they can actually afford. This means yielding some of that inflated 10-27% profit margin and giving up the bargain basement rates the Amazons and Metas of the world had secretly secured for themselves. Energy bills will no longer stand in the way of life, liberty and happiness.
People who make the least amount of money and hold the least wealth need energy bills that are dramatically lower than what they’re paying now. The smart way to get there would be to invest in their housing, with weatherization, solar, storage, and programs like virtual power plants that enable them to generate both energy and community wealth. Super efficient homes can run on just ¼ of the energy they use now. With just a bit of upfront investment that utilities and corporate customers like data centers will contribute, these households–which include about 100 million Americans from the country to the city–will secure an energy bill they can sustainably afford for the long term.
Second–utilities must end the practice of shutoffs and ensure every American has uninterrupted access to the power they need for the basic necessities of life, to live long and prosperous lives and participate in the dreams and economies of their communities. Shutoffs keep Americans in the dark upwards of 4 times longer than “natural” power outages. To say that a monopoly utility can rake in billions in profits every year while disconnecting the power people need for refrigerating both food and medicine, powering medical devices and laptops and internet, heating water for bathing and handwashing, and keeping their homes from becoming mere tents exposed to extreme heat and cold–is simply unconscionable. Worse still, utilities cash in on shutoffs through hundreds of millions of dollars they extract in late fees, reconnection fees, and new deposit requirements that push people toward predatory loans to get their power back on.
Like evictions, shutoffs are an overt form of violence. Except that utility customers cannot choose another landlord or find a cheaper way to live–they are stuck with the same sky high rate. We have allowed utilities to trap people in abusive relationships they cannot escape. And people who are trapped can’t hold jobs, raise families, or enjoy a modicum of dignity in America. Contrary to popular belief, the poor already use less energy than the wealthy, curtailing their usage in ways that endanger their health and survival, in which families have resorted to burning their children’s workbooks to stay warm. Shutoffs, particularly in the face of shareholder profits, simply must be abolished.
The utilities will not be obligated, however, to keep the lights on for the trust fund turd who has an Olympic-size heated pool but wants to free-ride on the goodwill and integrity of the 99% of us regular folk who are willing to pay our fair share. But for everybody else, the power to keep our food and medicine fresh, power a computer for homework, or simply run a fan on a hot night will be unquestionably there. Universal basic utilities are the essence of the American spirit and we will enshrine continuous access to utilities as an indisputable human right. When we can’t pay, we’ll receive multiple layers of seamless support to reduce energy usage and tap into rates that, like taxes, are based on what we earn. However, as those supports unfold, one thing is certain–no one will have their electricity, their heat, or their water shut off for non-payment. This is when Universal Basic Utilities take root.
Third and finally–voters in every state will have an option to fundamentally change the structure of utility governance and regulation. We are going to have a chance to decide if we want to elect an energy transformation committee in the next election cycle, which would have broad authority to rewrite the authorizing statutes of state public utilities commissions, end dark money political contributions by monopoly utilities, enhance consumer rights and protections, and rethink the selection of regulatory commissioners and public access to utility proceedings. Hell, we might even seek reparations that claw back the $25 billion we paid forward!
So that’s my $25 billion bargain–a three for one. We mobilize to pay down the utterly ridiculous, greed-laden debt that utilities have foisted on Americans captive to their monopoly energy company. That’s the people’s contribution to solve the energy affordability crisis. In return, we the people secure the right to put three vital conditions on how utilities operate. First, every American’s bills are kept in check and tied to what they earn. Second, shutoffs, and the threat of them, become a relic of the past. And third, we get to decide if and how we want to reform a broken, hundred-year-old system that bears more resemblance to England’s treatment of the thirteen colonies than to any modern or model democracy. Do we have a deal?