Newsweek: The Billionaires Won’t Save Us.

It’s Time to Transform How We Power Our Communities.

When Governor Newsom began courting billionaires like Warren Buffet to save PG&E, we wrote back in Newsweek:

“The billionaires won’t save us. It’s time to completely transform how we power our communities.”

Excerpts:

“The old electrical system—shaped through backroom deals between billionaire investors and politicians—relies on nearly 200 dirty gas power plants to generate massive amounts of electricity and carry it across dangerously long distances. This system produces profits for a few at the expense of many: working-class communities of color who are getting sick from living near dirty gas power plants, the medically vulnerable who rely on powered medical devices, and all of the people whose lives and livelihoods are disrupted by prolonged power outages and wildfires yet still have to pay rising rates.

This system cannot be salvaged.”

“Instead of pouring billions into propping up a dangerous, antiquated electrical infrastructure, Governor Newsom, our legislators and the California Public Utilities Commission must move California toward a safe, reliable, community-owned energy infrastructure that reinvests in local communities.

The contours of what a 21st-century energy system should look like are clear—we need a web of decentralized, distributed energy systems that generate, store and distribute clean renewable power locally and regionally. Workers and communities need to own and make meaningful decisions about our energy systems, not big corporations like PG&E. And we need to start building the 21st-century grid in working-class communities of color that have been unfairly burdened by this dirty energy system.”

Read the full op-ed here.