East Bay Equitable Energy Resilience

Overview

Energy is a human right, and we must fight for a world in which nobody faces the threat of power shutoff, whether due to wildfire risk, their inability to pay, or where they live. Unfortunately, we do not live in that world yet. One of our hub’s priorities is organizing for a more equitable and resilient energy system here in the East Bay. This work, in partnership with East Bay Clean Power Alliance, is aimed at furthering energy democracy locally in the East Bay, while building the broader movement for utility justice at the state and national level.

What’s wrong with our existing energy system?

Our energy system is unsustainable, unjust, and undemocratic. Large investor-owned utilities like PG&E profit handsomely from their monopolization of energy transmission and distribution infrastructure, while risking the lives of California residents with its atrocious safety record and passing off costs to its customers.

For instance, PG&E recently instituted an 8% rate increase--an average of $160 annually per customer--to cover for their past mismanagement of (and culpability in) California’s wildfires, but paid their CEO $18.5 million. As we organize for a Green New Deal, we must fight to break the power of these utilities and restore control of our energy systems to the people.

If you live in the East Bay, you buy your energy from East Bay Community Energy, by way of PG&E transmission lines. There are a number of problems with this sort of energy system: for one, it requires long, costly transmission lines that create higher fire risks, destroy desert habitat, and perpetrate environmental racism, like when PG&E shuts off power to prevent wildfires (so-called Public Safety Power Shutoffs), disproportionately harming elderly and medically vulnerable communities who need power to live. For folks in those communities, shutoffs--whatever the reason--have real impacts. Maybe they occur in the middle of a heat wave when functioning air conditioning is a matter of life and death. Or a refrigerator shuts off, and life-saving medicine or a week's worth of groceries go bad.

We’re working to build the movement for utility justice in the East Bay by:

  • Demanding more funding for community choice programs (programs in which solar panels and storage are built in and owned by frontline communities, providing an alternative to utility-generated power)
  • Forgiving utility bill debt incurred during COVID-19
  • Fighting shut-offs in frontline communities

What can you do?

If you want to be involved in our work to achieve an equitable and resilient energy system in the East Bay, please fill out this form. We’ll follow up with you!