TNR - The Best Way to Fight Heat Waves and Outages Is to Green the Grid

Legal director Sandeep Vaheesan gives insight on how concentration in the electric power sector is one of the main sources to the greenhouse gas emission crisis, which in turn, contributes to frequent periods of exceptionally high temperatures, climate change, and natural disasters.

Heat waves have killed thousands around the world in recent months. As periods of exceptionally high temperatures become increasingly frequent and intense due to climate change, drastic action is required to limit the damage. The electric power sector is both contributing to the problem as one of the principal sources of greenhouse gas emissions and being hurt by it, as seen by the early arrival of a powerful storm like Hurricane Beryl and lower water levels at Lake Mead threatening the Hoover Dam’s ability to produce energy. 

The United States, the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases and the second largest polluter today, has begun cleaning up its power supply, thanks to the significant growth in solar and wind generation and the rapid decline in coal-fired power. But it’s not happening fast enough. Approximately sixty percent of electricity in 2023 was still produced by the combustion of fossil fuels, led by natural gas. 

The problem is structural. Profit-oriented corporations definitionally pursue profits. And that means they can neither be counted on to deliver reliable service, as millions in Houston served by CenterPoint Energy can attest, nor to develop enough zero-carbon power—as suggested by the ever-precarious state of offshore wind projects. Fortunately, we have an alternative, time-tested model—publicly built and owned clean energy.

American culture frequently treats public ownership as a foreign experiment: feasible for Scandinavia, perhaps, but not here. Yet publicly owned utilities and rural electric cooperatives serve more than one-quarter of all power customers in the United States. The City of Los Angeles is served by the publicly owned Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is one of the largest generators of electricity in the nation. In rural and suburban areas across the country, tens of millions of people are served by cooperatives.

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