 California’s community choice movement and a future of public energy governanceJob Taminiau and John Byrne Energy Policy, 2025, vol. 206, issue C Abstract: A majority of United States electric power sector customers are served by shareholder-owned electric distributors. Critically, this design relegates people to the passive role of consumers as they interact through individual producer–consumer contract relations with the private utility company. Experimental strategies have emerged that elevate people to active participants in a public, collective decision-making process constituted of local, non-profit, and public authorities established by local governments. We show that the balance between private and public utility approaches is rapidly shifting in favor of public governance to the point where, for our case study of California, electricity service is now under majority public control. The observed transition has taken place in only a matter of years, undoing over a century of private sector dominance. This arresting finding reveals how public governance approaches can depose private utilities from their dominant position. We estimate that, by 2030, about two-thirds of California’s electricity market could be under public control. Keywords: Community energy; Energy system governance; Energy models; Local energy governance; Public utilities; Community choice aggregation; Energy transformation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:206:y:2025:i:c:s0301421525002551 DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2025.114748 Access Statistics for this article Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.