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Electricity bills for millions of utility customers are skyrocketing across the U.S. while the number of households facing extreme utility debt is mounting. Energy costs are being turbocharged by the AI data center boom, which is prolonging the burning of fossil fuels in the face of intensifying climate chaos. Overseeing all this is a powerful regime of investor-owned utilities that dominate our energy system. These for-profit corporations own and control the basic infrastructure we all depend on. Their executives and shareholders profit by raising electric rates or skimping on maintenance. And now, private equity firms are gunning for utilities.

But over the past few years, a vibrant movement for public power has emerged and grown.

Public power means public ownership and democratic control of our energy system. It’s an alternative to corporate-owned, profit-driven utilities. Public utilities in the U.S. are not new, and recent campaigns — from Tucson to Milwaukee, from San Diego to Ann Arbor — seek to expand and improve on this precedent, creating a truly democratic public utility system that serves human needs over profits. A notable victory for public power came with the 2023 passage of New York’s Build Public Renewables Act, and a campaign for public power in New York’s Hudson Valley has been gaining momentum.

Public power means public ownership and democratic control of our energy system. It’s an alternative to corporate-owned, profit-driven utilities.

This Truthout roundtable explores what public power means and why it’s needed, how it intersects with other issues and struggles, organizing lessons from ongoing campaigns, and more. Lee Ziesche is a climate justice organizer, co-chair of the Tucson Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and a core organizer in Tucson’s public power campaign. She was also involved in Public Power NY’s successful campaign to pass the Build Public Renewables Act. Matt Sehrsweeney is a climate justice organizer and Metro DC DSA member who co-chairs We Power DC, Washington, D.C.’s campaign for public power. Sandeep Vaheesan is the author of the recently published book Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States and the legal director at the Open Markets Institute.

This roundtable has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Derek Seidman: What is public power? Why’s it worth fighting for?

Matt Sehrsweeney: The priorities of investor-owned utilities (IOUs) are fundamentally at odds with those of rate payers. IOUs are obligated to maximize their profits for their shareholders, which usually means raising rates as high as possible. Operating a crucial service like providing electricity as a profit-seeking business leads to terrible outcomes for rate payers. In D.C., nearly a quarter of households are in debt to Pepco, their utility.

Publicly owned and operated utilities, on the other hand, are more accountable to the needs of communities and can better prioritize things like more affordable rates and reliable service. There’s also IOUs’ reliance on fossil fuels. If we want to address the........

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