Energy Democracy and Its Discontents feat. Edgardo Sepulveda

Edgardo Sepulveda, a telecoms regulatory economist, returns to
the Decouple podcast to discuss energy equity and how it relates
to discussions of energy poverty and energy democracy with a deep
dive of the June 2 Public Power Resolution tabled by Cori Bush
and Jamaal Bowman.  Electricity is considered a “necessity
good” in economics. For a variety of reasons in the
industrialized world people will use about the same amount
regardless of income. Given, however, that income is not evenly
distributed this means that lower-income households will spend
between 5% to 10% of their income on electricity, compared to
just 1% by high-income households. This results in energy
poverty. Edgardo describes the types of programs established to
mitigate its depth and incidence. There is broad consensus that
such programs have not been sufficient, and together with the
climate crisis this has resulted in calls for “energy democracy”,
a term first introduced by US activists in the 2000s that has
gained traction in Canada and Europe.


Edgardo reviewed a sample of the literature and noted that while
there is no accepted definition, it tends to mean greater “energy
citizenship” – broader participation in decision-making processes
– and also greater individual and community control of energy
infrastructure, with a strong preference for localism and
renewables. A good conceptual review article is:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629620303431


Nevertheless, the empirical evidence is that energy democracy’s
gains have been modest, and many of the policies to promote
greater individual and community control of energy have been
regressive – that is, have resulted in greater income inequality.
Figure 7 of this ex-post review shows that 29 of 37 studies
looking at feed-in tariffs or NEM were regressive and 7 neutral;
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abc11f Chris
and Edgardo close off the episode discussing the June 2 “Public
Power” Resolution tabled in the US House of Representatives (HR)
by Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) & Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), two
members of the “Squad.”  The Resolution calls for the
Federal government to acquire all private electricity assets and
transfer them to lower jurisdictional levels and communities,
while requiring 100% renewable generation.   In
@Dr_Keefer's words the @CoriBush & @JamaalBowmanNY resolution
advocates for an "occupy Wall Street grid."


Its ideological commitment to small is beautiful localism, 100%
renewables & magical thinking about the grid makes a public
power bill a danger to the public.  As such, the resolution
appears to be a good example of how energy democracy is seen by
progressives in the US and provided Chris and Edgardo with a
concrete proposal to discuss.
https://bush.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/bush.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Bush%20Public%20Power%20Resolution%20FINAL.pdf
Edgardo’s Twitter handle is @E_R_Sepulveda