Utilities are lobbying against the public interest. Here's how to stop it.
In this episode, utility watchdog David Pomerantz discusses all the ways that utilities use ratepayer money to lobby against the clean-energy transition — and what regulators and policy makers can do to stop it.
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(Active transcript)
Text transcript:
David Roberts
There are many features of US public life that I believe, perhaps naively, would be the subject of a great deal more anger were they better understood. One of those is the role utilities play in climate policy.
A rapid transition to a low-carbon energy system is necessary to avoid the worst of climate change. Happily, that transition is going to be an enormous net benefit to US public health and the US economy. It's good for quality of life, economic growth, international competitiveness, national security, and the long-term inhabitability of the planet.
But it’s not necessarily good for the companies that actually sell energy to customers — power and gas utilities. In fact, utilities are using every tool at their disposal to slow the energy transition, from lobbying to PR campaigns to donations to, as the last few years have demonstrated, outright bribery.
And here's the even more galling bit: they are fighting against the clean-energy transition using your money. They use ratepayer money — from captive customers over whom they are granted a monopoly — to fund their lobbying. They have effectively conscripted their customers, who have no choice where to get their power and gas, into an involuntary small-donor army working against the public interest.
It’s outrageous. In a new report called “Getting Politics Out of Utility Bills,” the Energy and Policy Institute — one of the best utility watchdogs out there — details some of this utility corruption and offers recommendations for how to prevent it. These are not futile recommendations to Congress, but actions that fall within the current powers of state regulators and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
I have been ranting about utilities for years, and one of my most reliable sources on the subject has always been the report’s author, Energy and Policy Institute Executive Director David Pomerantz, so I was eager to talk to him to air some shared grievances, hear some enraging tales of utility shenanigans, and discuss what can be done to rein them in.
All righty, then. David Pomeranz. Welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
David Pomeranz
Thank you so much for having me.
David Roberts
I was thinking of you just earlier today as I saw a new story in the Washington Post about how the gas industry is under fire and it is now hiring Democratic politicians to shill for it. And I thought: "Golly, isn't that thematically on point?". So it seems like a perfect time to be covering this report. Before we get into specifics of who's done what and how to stop them from doing it, let's just start with power utilities are out there getting involved in politics. And let's just sort of discuss what is their net effect on politics. Like, what are they pushing for and against out there in the states and at the federal level?
David Pomeranz
That is a great question, and I think it will be important in context for your listeners who I am count myself as a loyal one, and I know many are thinking about climate change, and energy policy, and decarbonization, and the energy transition. And if they are concerned about those things then they should be concerned about utilities, political power and their political machines. So let's talk about what their political agenda is. And we're tal
