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At this past February’s “Alternative Models of Ownership Conference” hosted by the Labour Party in London, party leader Jeremy Corbyn asserted the centrality of energy policy to his vision of socialism: “The challenge of climate change requires us to radically shift the way we organize our economy.” He outlined a radical vision of an energy system powered by wind and solar, organized as a decentralized grid, democratically controlled by the communities that rely on it, and — crucially — publicly owned. Corbyn’s declaration laid out an exciting and ambitious vision of how socialists can press on climate change. But it also served as a reminder that socialists need to get serious about the politics of energy — lest disaster capitalism continue to shape energy policy. We must get involved in concrete campaigns to transform how energy is governed and push for a just transition to renewable sources. The terrain of energy politics is multifaceted, comprising the production, transformation, distribution, and consumption of energy. Energy sources such as coal, oil, natural gas, biomass, hydropower, sunlight, and wind each entail distinct social and environmental costs related to their extraction or capture, and their subsequent transformation into usable electricity. Electrical grids connect energy production and transformation to its sites of consumption. Grids encompass both the high-voltage transmission of electricity from where it’s generated to population centers, and the direct distribution of that electricity to homes and businesses. In the US, beginning in the early 1990s, energy deregulation encouraged a separation in ownership between energy generation and its distribution, resulting in an increasingly complex set of state-level markets of competing energy providers, which in turn sell energy to the private, public, or cooperatively owned utilities. In this terrain, there are several points of entry for eco-socialist politics. Broadly, our energy vision should center on the three D’s: decarbonize, democratize, and decommodify. Decarbonizing energy sources requires massive political confrontation with the fossil-fuel industry — a movement currently being led by the frontline communities most impacted by fossil-fuel extraction and its transformation — combined with federal and state-level policies that punish carbon emissions and a regulatory framework that encourages transition to renewable sources. Meanwhile, democratization and decommodification — the collective control of energy distribution that treats energy access as a human right rather than an opportunity for profit — are another point of entry. To achieve these ends, socialists must politicize the grid, and propose alternative visions of ownership and decision-making. In the United States, over two-thirds of electricity users are served by for-profit utilities. These private monopolies are often overseen by state-level energy commissions that are ripe for regulatory capture by Big Energy and the fossil-fuel industry. Even where utilities are publicly owned, technocratic governance structures provide limited fora for public input, let alone real democratic control. Building a bridge toward a socialist energy future requires a vision of a system that removes the profit motive from the delivery of utilities services and establishes energy as a universal human right alongside other basic human needs. Ultimately, the three D’s of an eco-socialist energy vision are interconnected. If a transition away from fossil-fuel energy sources is absolutely necessary for human and planetary survival, the capitalist status quo of private, for-profit utilities is an obstacle to a sustainable future. Unlike coal, oil, and natural gas, solar and wind power are seasonally variable and unevenly distributed. Collective, democratic control of the energy grid is vital not only to put an end to fuel poverty and ensure that everyone’s basic needs are met, but to reliably combine and redistribute renewable energy sources. Our choices are eco-socialism or barbarism. Achieving such a transformative vision requires concrete campaigns that challenge energy and fossil-fuel corporations, and disrupt the circuits of political and economic power that prioritize profit over the needs of humans and the planet. Such campaigns must be led by working-class movements demanding the satisfaction of basic needs and the transition to an ecologically sustainable grid — a vision that is increasingly possible, given the rapidly falling prices of renewables. In Rhode Island, the Providence chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), in close alliance with the George Wiley Center, is taking on the National Grid, a private multinational utilities company which is currently awash in billions of dollars in annual profits and consumer-fronted infrastructure projects. National Grid formed as a result of Thatcher-era utilities privatization in the UK. It has since has become a major player in the northeastern United States, operating electricity transmission and delivering electricity and natural gas through several subsidiary companies in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York. Our campaign, #NationalizeGrid, ultimately envisions a statewide, publicly owned, decentralized, and democratically controlled utility. Our first priority, however, is to address the shutoff crisis — the termination of gas and electricity service due to inability to pay the bill — that affects tens of thousands of poor and working-class Rhode Islanders every year. This crisis is only likely to worsen, as National Grid is proposing another rate increase — the third in the last year alone. In this context, Providence DSA and the George Wiley Center are gearing up for a fight to ensure affordable heat and electricity for all.

How We’re Fighting Back In Rhode Island, the George Wiley Center has been an essential force in the fight for utilities justice for decades. A grassroots agency committed to organizing with low-income residents to fight the systems that generate and sustain poverty, the George Wiley Center was instrumental in the passage of the Henry Shelton Act in 2011, which allows financially stressed National Grid customers to be forgiven a percentage of their unpaid utility bills. In recent years, they have successfully organized with impacted residents each fall by lobbying the PUC to ensure utility-service restoration before the cold winter months for the thousands of low-income Rhode Islanders who have their electric and gas shut off each year. Alongside these and other efforts, the George Wiley Center is in the midst of an ongoing campaign to reinstate the Percentage of Income Payment Plan (PIPP), which would help mitigate the shutoff crisis by structuring utilities payments based on a percentage of customers’ incomes rather than a flat rate that National Grid sets for every utilities customer regardless of their income. At the center of this fight, George Wiley Center coordinator Camilo Viveiros emphasizes “the grassroots efforts of low income and people of color, and those who wrote letters and made calls all last summer [about their personal experiences with National Grid] while attending the George Wiley Center weekly meetings.” From the time PIPP was implemented in 1986 until it was eliminated in Rhode Island and many other states during a wave of neoliberal deregulation in the 1990s, this program provided financial relief for thousands of low-income Rhode Islanders and many more throughout the US. While it remains a successful program for low-income residents in over a dozen states nationwide, National Grid continues to resist efforts to reinstate PIPP in Rhode Island. As Providence DSA began developing our campaign to take on National Grid and achieve utilities justice, it was an obvious decision to align our efforts in coalition with the George Wiley Center and their deep roots in community organizing here in Rhode Island. So, we immediately got to work in fall and winter 2017 with writing petitions to the PUC to fight the shutoffs, joining their effort to reinstate PIPP, and engaging in militant and disruptive lobbying tactics at the PUC against National Grid’s utility-rate hikes. Normally these PUC hearings are sleepy affairs, but a combination of Providence DSA, the George Wiley Center, and other local leftist groups have livened them up. At recent hearings in Pawtucket and Providence, the PUC members have been told some hard truths about their role in a process which shuts out those most affected by the decisions of PUC and National Grid. We have made a concerted effort to force the PUC to shift its focus from National Grid and its financial desires to the impact that high utility bills have on marginalized and oppressed peoples, especially the poor, the elderly, those on fixed income, people with disabilities, and those with chronic or severe health problems. The Providence hearing, in particular, was a strange and sadly emblematic experience. The hearing was scheduled to take place at Hope High School, a public high school which, despite being in the wealthy part of town, is in a state of neglect and disrepair. For weeks, the PUC said the hearing would take place in the cafeteria but changed the venue to the auditorium two days before. Apparently, the PUC had trouble communicating with the staff at Hope High since when people arrived, the main doors were locked and several people had difficulty getting inside. Once inside the auditorium, we were greeted by one of the most ironic scenes imaginable. In this large school auditorium, there were only three functioning overhead lights. Over the next couple of hours, people shared extremely moving testimony in near darkness. Whether or not the PUC acted out of malice towards the public and wished to prevent them from attending the hearing, the lack of preparedness and care for their engagement with the public shows that the PUC and similar bodies need to be pressured and pushed in order to fulfill their regulatory duty. As citizen journalist Steve Ahlquist quipped that night, “Until today, I thought the phrase ‘democracy dies in darkness’ was a metaphor.” The George Wiley Center and Providence DSA have been able to achieve some short-term wins and developed momentum and enthusiasm around particular reforms through widespread public engagement, but it remains a constant struggle to carve out the most basic of human rights from National Grid and the PUC. The structural deficits of the for-profit model are ample evidence that if we want to achieve our goals, we are first going to have to articulate a vision of a better, more accountable, and democratically controlled grid.