Fighting to safeguard democracy or to protect the climate, we are always navigating power. At stake is the electric power that courses through our electric grids, as well as the political power that shapes our leaders' decisions.
Third Act’s Power Up Communities! campaign is designed to hold Public Utility Commissions (PUCs), legislators, electric and gas utilities, and fossil fuel companies accountable. We can help fix our broken systems by fostering Energy Democracy, ensuring that We the People decide how our energy is produced, transmitted, and shared.
It comes down to this: we must transition rapidly away from fossil gas, even though the industry has falsely promoted it as a “bridge fuel” while they buy off regulators and legislators to lock in future decades of sunk costs with new “peaker” gas plants, pipelines and LNG export terminals. At the same time, we must accelerate the clean energy revolution that is underway, so its benefits reach everyone, even as we fight to keep the dirty fuels safely in the ground.
Solar Is the Cheapest Form of Energy in the World
Twenty years ago, only 4% of the U.S. electricity system was fossil gas; today, that number is 40% – and rising. Fossil gas extraction is dirty and dangerous, harms frontline communities who are forced to live near fracking wells that harm our health, our environment and our climate. Surveys tell us that nearly everyone wants clean energy – but the utilities won’t give us what we want, and far too often, the regulators serve the utilities rather than the public. In bad faith, these utilities and regulators have disregarded the staggering cost of damages to our health, our climate and our future.
Moreover the cost of fossil gas has skyrocketed in the past two years, on a rollercoaster of price spikes that has left many states saddling ratepayers with billions in yet-uncollected fuel charges that may be paid to greedy fossil fuel companies over decades.
But there’s good news, and lots of it! Solar has now undeniably become the cheapest form of electricity in the world. Local, distributed rooftop solar is growing by leaps and bounds, aggregated “community solar” is an idea whose time has come, offshore wind is coming into its own, technical and policy barriers to transmission are coming down, and most importantly, people are speaking up about what we need – and it’s not fossil gas!
How the Power Up Communities! Campaign Addresses These Issues
At the intersection of Third Act’s key issues of climate and democracy are Public Utility Commissions (“PUCs”): appointed or elected regulatory bodies with broad and far- reaching authority to execute energy policy distinct from legislatures, governors or federal oversight. PUCs regulate monopoly power utilities, set rates for consumers, approve or deny new power plants, define state climate action plans, and enforce environmental justice – and in many states they’ve operated in obscurity, largely behind closed doors.
Our Power Up Communities! Campaign has been the first coordinated nationwide initiative to organize direct citizen advocacy across state-level PUCs in the United States. Third Act is helping network dozens of partners for a collaborative strategy that leverages the current moment to reshape climate & energy policy and to democratize our energy economy. Beyond PUCs specifically, Third Act’s work extends to local, state and regional advocacy for sound clean energy and climate policy, and to uplift and extend recent federal climate protection efforts under the IRA.
