California’s community choice movement and a future of public energy governance

Abstract

A majority of United States electric power sector customers are served by shareholder-owned electric distributors. Critically, this design relegates people to the passive role of consumers as they interact through individual producer–consumer contract relations with the private utility company. Experimental strategies have emerged that elevate people to active participants in a public, collective decision-making process constituted of local, non-profit, and public authorities established by local governments. We show that the balance between private and public utility approaches is rapidly shifting in favor of public governance to the point where, for our case study of California, electricity service is now under majority public control. The observed transition has taken place in only a matter of years, undoing over a century of private sector dominance. This arresting finding reveals how public governance approaches can depose private utilities from their dominant position. We estimate that, by 2030, about two-thirds of California’s electricity market could be under public control.