New York passed a publicly funded renewable energy program. This is how DSA did it—and how you can too.
by Ashley Dawson, The Nation
New York just became the first US state to pass a major Green New Deal policy. After four years of organizing, the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA) is now in the New York state budget. Passage of the act is a massive challenge to fossil fuel hegemony and a major victory for public power.
The BPRA authorizes and directs the state’s public power provider—the New York Power Authority (NYPA)—to plan, build, and operate renewable energy projects across the state to meet the ambitious timetable to decarbonize the grid mandated by the Climate Act of 2019. The NYPA, the largest public utility in the country, provides the most affordable energy in the state, but until now, it has been prohibited from building and owning new utility-scale renewable generation projects because of lobbying by profit-seeking private energy companies.
How did we win passage of this plan to start a publicly funded renewable energy program?
The Public Power NY movement began in late 2019 with a campaign organized by the eco-socialist working group of the NYC Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) against a rate hike request from the private utility ConEd. According to a 2018 report from the US Energy Information Administration, ConEd was already charging the second-highest residential rates of any major utility in the country (nearly double the national average), and now they wanted to raise electricity rates an additional 6 percent and gas rates by 11 percent.
Recent Posts
Waterboarding for Dollars in Cuba
Take Action Now “What the United States is doing to Cubans is equivalent to waterboarding them into submission, and all CBS could seem to talk about…
The Surveillance Economy Is Here. This Is How We Fight Back.
Take Action Now Rejecting surveillance capitalism means insisting, clearly and unapologetically, that markets should serve the people — not the other…
While the U.S. Doubles Down on Fossil Fuels, Other Countries Are Charting a Path Away From Them
Take Action Now The recent Santa Marta conference in Colombia was the world’s first diplomatic conference expressly dedicated to phasing out fossil…
The Right Wants to Erase Minority Representation. We’ll Register Millions to Stop Them.
Take Action Now Their insult will arouse us—and put Republican incumbents’ own seats at risk.By Yusef D. Jackson, The Nation When the right-wing…