Welcome
to the New Rules Project's section on energy issues. We've named this section DEMOCRATIC
ENERGY to reflect the emerging debate between energy centralists and energy
decentralists, between those who favor absentee ownership and regulation and
those who favor local ownership and control.
Energy heats our homes, lights our offices, powers our industries and fuels our vehicles. Today the energy sector is undergoing a profound transformation. Governments at every level are changing the rules. Meanwhile, technological innovations are making it increasingly possible to think about a more decentralized and environmentally benign energy system.
Democratic energy means an energy system where the consumer can become a producer, where power plants are located near where the energy is consumed, and where the decisions about the structure of the energy system is made in large part by those who will feel the impact of those decisions.
Let's examine more closely four pillars of Democratic Energy.
Decentralizing Authority and Control
Which utility organizational structure is better - customer-ownership or investor-ownership? Both sides have data to justify their position. The debate is useful, but one hundred years of actual experience teaches us that both structures are efficient, reliable, and innovative. The most important distinction is that customer-owned utilities are inherently more democratically governed, closer to their customers and more responsive to them. The federal government has recognized these differences, and since the 1930s has established policies to nurture customer-owned electric utilities.
Decentralizing Capacity
The age of the personal power plant is upon us. Today the United States is home to about 10,000 power plants. It's conceivable that by 2020 there could be over a million. Since the 1970's power plants have been decreasing in size. Today, technological developments are reducing the size of a new power plants dramatically, from the megawatt to the kilowatt level, from the neighborhood scale to the small business and household scale.
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