Bring Energy Democracy to the Green New Deal

Jay OwenGlobal Citizen, Latest Headlines

The latest from The Next System Project

Policy tools to bring energy democracy
to the Green New Deal

The best way to achieve the dual mission of decarbonizing our energy use and ending the economic inequities embedded in our current system, we need a Green New Deal centered in democratic governance and community control. The co-manager of our climate and energy program, Johanna Bozuwa, partnered with Timothy DenHerder-Thomas of Cooperative Energy Futures in developing a suite of policy tools that advance energy democracy at both the national and local levels as a core part of the green energy future. The first set includes expanded community choice aggregationa federal Community Ownership of Power Administrationdebt cancellation for rural cooperativesa green investment bank, and redesigned renewable incentives.

See all the tools…

‘Make the profit-maximizing corporation obsolete’In an essay for TNI Longreads, Marjorie Kelly makes a bold case for “the end of the corporation”—certainly in its dominant form as a profit-extraction machine designed primarily to enrich shareholders. “What must change is the structural design and ownership of the corporation itself. We need to envisage and create an entirely new concept of the company – a just firm – designed from the inside out for a new mandate: to serve broad wellbeing and the public good. The just firm is the only kind that should ultimately be permitted to exist. The time is coming when society must end the corporation as we know it.”

Read the essay…

THE NEXT SYSTEM PODCAST

Why we need a ‘job guarantee’ nowThe national unemployment rate is below 4 percent, but too many people still struggle to find a good job—or a job at all. A national job guarantee would transform the job market from a corporate race to the bottom to one in which workers are empowered, get a fair share of the wealth their work creates, and have opportunities to provide vital services to their communities. Hear economist Darrick Hamilton and PolicyLink’s Sarah Treuhaft explain why the time to fight for a job guarantee is now.

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Winning public control of electric utilitiesThere has been an eruption of support for taking back public control over electric utilities from absentee investors, and it’s not just in California, where anger over corporate utility PG&E’s role in sparking devastating wildfires has built momentum for a public takeover that has even moved the governor’s office. We highlight some of the wins, losses, and ongoing fights for public control of power that are playing out across the country at the city and state level.

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