Refusing vaccination is a cruel and selfish choice.

Code Red: Why Your City Can’t Afford—or Find—a New Ambulance Emergency service costs have been going up for years, frustrating city officials. One reason seems to be private equity, which bought up ambulance makers and raised prices.

Private equity is a cancer on the American economy open.substack.com/pub/mattstol...

New: The escalating cost of California's climate-driven wildfires now adds $41 to the average monthly power bill for residential customers of PG&E, the state's largest utility - nearly 20% of the bill. Such "climateflation" undermines electrification of the state economy. Free link
bloom.bg/4dGjG8M

America really needs a new ballroom

With all evidence that clean energy portfolios (wind/solar/storage) are less expensive, we should absolutely prohibit new large loads to be served with polluting, expensive, and geopolitically vulnerable fuel for power supply.

Boosting Consumer Control with Better Utility Governance — Episode 237 of Local Energy Rules | ILSR Energy Democracy Initiative What if we changed monopoly utility governance to give consumers more control over utility decisions?

Josh talked about how we could improve utility governance, such as by having consumer interests represented on the utility board of directors: ilsr.org/articles/boo...

Crashing the Utility Transmission Planning Party — Episode 219 of Local Energy Rules | Energy Democracy Energy Democracy article by Maria McCoy explores Monopolies, Regulations, Transmission and Utilities, focusing on

I've had the pleasure to talk with both Shelley and Josh on the Local Energy Rules podcast about transmission governance issues. Shelley talked about "Crashing the Utility Transmission Planning Party" ilsr.org/articles/cra...

It's the first I've heard of anything about aryans or Norse symbolism. It may not have been my favorite of the options open for public comment, but it has sky, water, a north star, and a vague shape of the state.

If Trump were governor, he'd cut off state aid to cities that fly the old flag.

Skip to impeachment, please.

Look, this new Trump tariff will hit you at the gas pump and be paid to Iran. #winning

Minneapolis city council shouldn't pass resolutions on foreign policy and Greater Minnesota cities should shut up and fly the actual state flag.

BREAKING NEWS -- "Let's do genocide in two weeks" -- President Trump

When we say that "surveys show solar energy is extremely popular" it's important to remember that is not a fixed point. A relentless campaign of lying about clean energy can make it unpopular.

Calling the @worldbollardassoc.bsky.social

Impeachment is the only way to prevent further war crimes.

As bills calling for more utility-owned generation advance, an old debate is renewed • New Hampshire Bulletin Two proposals to allow New Hampshire utilities to take a more active role in producing power for the grid were endorsed by their respective chambers last week.

It's useful to ask "why would utilities deliver cheaper energy despite contrary evidence?" a better question would be "what happens when you give the monopoly grid operator power over its competitors" by letting it own generation again? vist.ly/4xkmf h/t @mollyrains.bsky.social

"Let's do genocide" –– President Trump

Will California fund or kill its thriving virtual power plant program? Gov. Newsom’s administration has proposed ending a program that’s brought a gigawatt of grid relief online. Lawmakers want to know what will replace it.

Virtual power plant program delivers big benefits, so my question is why a) legislators have to renew it and b) why it shouldn't be billed to Calif. utilities for delivering more cost effective resources than they did: vist.ly/4xg3y h/t @jeffstjohn.bsky.social‬ @canarymedia.com

An important lesson for utility commissioners reacting to breathless utility reports of data center load growth. We've read this book before....

If you went in with low expectations, today's outcome met them. We have a utility-owned pilot with reporting requirements but no performance based accountability. We'll find out if there are distribution level benefits in two years. By then Xcel shareholders will have banked ~$10 mil.

- No movement on behind the meter VPP. The only relevant order point requires Xcel to file an update on their open-access Colorado VPP in mid-2027.

- No deadline for 3rd party asset ownership (and not even any meaningful discussion of it)

- Cast as a "pilot" with initial capacity of up to 50 MW before a Commission review (likely 2028).

Had to leave early but here's the outline of the decision:
- Utility-owned program approved with lots of modifications to assess distribution-level benefits.

Sparkfund conflict of interest segment ends with a stern requirement to file some paperwork for Commission review.

Despite the contrast, the Commission has so far passed over any options for third party asset ownership.

While a clear financial conflict of interest, the Sparkfund contract will be dwarfed by the financial value of a juicy 9% plus return on equity on $430 million in utility-owned assets

Discussing an Xcel-proposed decision option that would strike a requirement for Xcel to report on its sole source selection of Sparkfund and instead to report on the procurement process (which is separate).

Comm. Ham back to the layered conflict of interest. Xcel is an investor in Energy Impact Partners, a pooled fund that invested in Sparkfund. Sparkfund was selected as the sole source implementer of Xcel's Capacity*Connect program. 🤔