For a number of reasons that have become increasingly clear in the past few months, I don’t think I’ve ever been so confident in the massive role that customer-owned energy like rooftop solar is going to play in powering this country. Contrary to what some of my besties at EEI have always assumed, I've never really considered myself a rooftop fanboy, per se. It's an important tech/business model, but with major limits, and I've assumed it would be a key part of a clean portfolio, but no more than that.

I am thinking today of all the people I have been lucky enough to meet over the last 15 years who have dedicated their lives to pushing for climate action. I am so deeply grateful to all of them. The closest I come to getting hippie-dippy about this stuff is a choice I make to believe that the little things - the honk-and-waves, tabling, letters to the editor, Wednesday night volunteer meetings - all add up to something larger, even when they feel futile.

If you have an electric bill, you likely footed the bill for VIPs to nosh on these snacks at an inauguration parade watch party for Trump in Jan, 2017. The party was at the headquarters of the Edison Electric Institute, the utility trade group. documented.net/media/republic… Since EEI's hosting of this gala wasn't "lobbying" according to the Internal Revenue Code, these costs would have been included in the bills that all its investor-owned utility members charge in customers' rates.

@FERC can stop this practice in a proceeding it's considering now.

Thread: @leahstokes is such a superstar for bringing desperately needed attention to utility corruption. She explains the problem to @chrislhayes in this pod, and I love hearing the gravity of the issue dawn on him. His response is beautiful: 1/

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the… Chris: "I mean if you think about it, [utilities] are at the front edge of regulatory capture, because they're so big and they're so bound to regulatory decisions, and everything in their bottom line depends entirely on that .... 2/

THREAD: I think one of the greater services I can provide to twitter is to catalog how The Simpsons' C. Montgomery Burns predicted actual behavior by the CEOs of real-life monopoly utility companies. Here goes... 1/? Let's begin with a classic.

Monty Burns: "My greatest nemesis still provides our customers with free light, heat and energy: They call this enemy... the sun."



And the real-life CEOs trying to block rooftop solar! nytimes.com/2017/07/08/cli… 2/?

Does it ever feel like the utilities who have the *least* renewable energy in their portfolios do the *most* fear-mongering around how the grid will go down if they add any more? A BRIEF THREAD... 1/ Here is just one example from Tampa Electric Co (TECO) because it happened to cross my radar, but this applies equally to almost all large US investor-owned utilities, especially in the South. 2/

Here are the 3 biggest companies in the world @Microsoft, @amazon, @Apple re. @DominionEnergy: "We are writing to express concern regarding the re-stated intentions of energy providers to meet our energy demand with expensive fossil fuel projects." ceres.org/sites/default/… 1/8 More from these massive tech companies and @DominionEnergy customers: "Companies providing or using data centers want to power our operations with renewable energy resources like wind and solar. When procured competitively, renewable energy allows us to save money." 2/8

Electric utilities are diverging on the question of fossil fuels. All agree that coal is dying, but some are moving to a 100% clean energy future, while others are still trying to build gas. A tale of two Michigan utilities offers a great case study of the divide. Thread... 1/14 Our poster-child for the gas-guzzling utility is @DTE_Energy. DTE just released a plan to get out of coal by 2040 and reduce CO2 emissions significantly by that year. But it also is trying to preserve the option to keep build new gas-burning power plants. 2/14

Arizona’s monopoly utility, APS, has been aggressively fighting against a renewable energy ballot initiative. One of the monopoly’s talking points has been that they *love* renewables - just not this ballot initiative. But is it true? 🤨 A thread... 1/8 For answers, ignore APS’ PR efforts - they have no obligation to be truthful with customers. Instead, see how they talk to investors. A presentation today was revealing. 👀 2/8 seekingalpha.com/article/418637…