‘It sounds to me like Con Edison is asking that I pay thirty percent more to pretty much kill myself. They are charging me more money, so that they can make a profit on building new infrastructure that they know are going to screw us all—like, literally set the world on fire.’

It’s the third day of Public Statement Hearings at the Con Edison rate case proceeding, on an icy day in New York in March, and a frustrated homeowner has called in to testify about the difficulty she faces each month paying her energy bills. ConEd is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the US, powering all of New York City and neighbouring Westchester County. They’ve filed a case formally requesting permission from New York’s regulatory body, the Public Service Commission (PSC), to increase their customer rates. At this Public Hearing, advocacy groups, organisers, elected officials, and everyday New Yorkers have come to speak on whether it should be allowed to do so.

The people’s consensus appears to be no. Across the board, the commenters make a resounding plea for the Public Service Commission to reject ConEd’s request. People testify about choosing between food, rent, medicine, or paying ConEd. One woman talks about the $17,000 bill her elderly mother received. Another, calling on a break from her shift at a hospital, says that her monthly bill forces her to choose between feeding her child or keeping them warm.

At this hearing, we see that the human impact of the privatisation of energy utilities is not one confined by national borders. The same can be seen in the UK, where foodbanks are reporting that people have been turning down food that takes too much energy to cook, and where millions will be in fuel poverty this winter, many of whom will be forced to make the same kinds of choices between heating or eating. And not only are people getting ripped off with higher and higher bills while shareholder profits skyrocket, but the business case for this is edging us all closer to complete climate catastrophe: the rate increase will fund expenditure on new oil pipelines across the state to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars every year. After COP27, the Tories, too, will announce whether the country’s first new coal mine in 30 years will get the go-ahead in Cumbria.

In both countries, the system we’re trapped in rarely responds to cries for economic or environmental justice. Another ConEd rate case took place in New York back in 2019, with much the same grievances aired as this year. In January 2020, the PSC approved the increase anyway. Britain’s own National Grid, one of the largest investor-owned utilities in the world headquartered in London, also operates in New York. The increase it sought in 2019 was approved in August 2022. This is despite the $2.3 billion of utility debt across the state, a figure that ballooned over the pandemic, with nearly one in every six households behind on their bills.

During the pandemic, New York State did block service terminations for unpaid bills. But the same wasn’t true for the rest of the US. In fact, it’s estimated that a national moratorium on utility shutoffs between March and November 2020 would have seen Covid-19 infection rates reduced by almost nine percent, and deaths by nearly fifteen percent.

But in New York, as in Britain, this status quo is not without resistance. Campaigners have been seeking to fight the injustices of private power and the fossil fuel economy. Public Power, a state-wide coalition made up of various Democratic Socialists of America chapters and other organisations, describes itself as ‘fighting for an environmentally sustainable energy system that’s also racially, socially, and economically just’. Over the summer, Public Power came within a hair’s breadth of achieving their first goal: passing the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA). This would be step one in bringing the entirety of New York’s energy grid—generation, transmission, and distribution—into public ownership, fully powered by renewable sources.

BPRA would enable the New York Power Authority (NYPA)—already the largest publicly owned utility in the country—to build and own new renewable generation projects, which it is currently restricted from doing. It would also have put disadvantaged communities and low-income customers first in line for the sale of low-cost renewable energy. A recent report by the Climate and Community Project says that expanding NYPA in this way could create between 28,000 and 51,000 jobs, and to top it all off, BPRA would be revenue-neutral for the State, financed through bond issuances and progressive electric rates.

At the beginning of June 2022, BPRA passed the State Senate. In the last days of this year’s legislative session, some assembly members received hundreds of calls a day from constituents urging them to pass BPRA. Despite these efforts, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie ultimately stonewalled the bill by refusing to bring it to a vote. The reasons for this are almost banally familiar: lobby groups, like the Independent Power Producers of New York (IPPNY) and the strategically named Alliance for Clean Energy New York (ACENY), released a memo of opposition to the bill. These same groups, and investor-owned utilities themselves, donate thousands of dollars a year to Democrat and Republican politicians alike. IPPNY donated $3,000 to Kevin Parker, the Senate Energy Committee Chair. Parker eventually dropped his opposition to BPRA after a primary challenge from a local DSA-endorsed candidate. But another $3,000 was well spent by IPPNY: the Corporations Committee Chair, Amy Paulin, became the only Democrat to vote against BPRA. While it passed these committees, ultimately, BPRA was left to languish and New York lawmakers went home for a third consecutive year without passing substantive climate legislation.

This isn’t the end for BPRA. The bill will be back in the upcoming legislative session, and public support is strong enough that Heastie was forced to hold an unprecedented special hearing for the bill in July. Public Power are hoping to use this momentum as they seek backing, including from labour unions. This is an important step: at July’s special hearing, the head of the IBEW state utility labour council spoke against the bill; while conceding that BPRA was ‘the best I’ve ever seen when it comes to protections for labour unions’, he feared these were too good to be true. ‘We need working class power, and we need labour invested and involved in the transition,’ Michealangelo Pomarico, an organiser with Mid-Hudson Valley DSA and the Public Power Coalition, says. ‘We’ve shown that this is legislation that can move. Passing the Senate opened a lot of doors for discussions. And so, the more we organise, our goal is to convince [labour] that we want you here.’

There’s still general distrust of public ownership in the US, and a deeply rooted belief in competition and the free market. That’s why, in tandem with Public Power, DSA are also seeking to expand the number of socialists in office to shift the Overton window further to the left inside Albany, a necessity to get radical change on energy to happen. Insurgent DSA candidates have won victories in this year’s Democratic primaries, continuing a history of recent electoral successes. These candidates have made the BPRA and Public Power a central tenet of their campaign platforms: linking rising bill prices with private ownership and the climate crisis with voters on the doorstep, where they’re also talking about housing security and healthcare for all. In the Hudson Valley, Sarahana Shrestha, a climate organiser and first-generation Nepali immigrant running on the Public Power platform, toppled a twenty-eight-year incumbent. In Queens, Kristen Gonzales became the nominee for a new State Senate district, despite an onslaught of attack ads from the real estate industry in the final weeks of the race. Some of those who have gone on to run as DSA primary candidates are those arrested at Public Power demonstrations in previous years.

Other Public Power campaigns are spreading throughout the state. In Rochester, on Lake Ontario, groups are organising against that area’s investor-owned utility, RG&E, in favour of a locally and democratically owned public utility. Long Island has just secured $2 million of funding to explore the feasibility of turning the Long Island Power Authority into a fully public utility. Beyond the Empire State, there are similar movements pushing to democratise ownership in places like Maine, Massachusetts, and Minnesota. What all of these campaigns show is not just a growing discontent with the status quo, but a growing interest in building a better alternative too.

Looking across the Atlantic from the UK, on the back of a summer of strikes and facing down a winter of almost certain desperation, we clearly see the need for collective thinking on an international level. Building a utility system that works for the public good rather than the profits of a few is a slow process, but one which is vital in order to imagine and invent the eco-socialist futures we all deserve. In the words of Sarahana Shrestha, ‘the future must be beautiful’.