Powerful US utilities secretly fund ‘grassroots’ groups to sway cities away from switch to public power

The utility industry is quietly dispatching a network of front groups to thwart the growing push for public power across the US – a push that comes amid mounting frustration over sky-high utility bills, electric outages, a slow transition to clean energy and private utilities’ soaring profits . Communities from Ann Arbor, Michigan to San Diego, California and St Petersburg, Florida are exploring municipalizing their grids to join the country’s approximately 2,000 public power companies. Municipal utilities – or “munis” – are owned and operated by local authorities and broadly have lower rates, better reliability scores and are structurally more accountable to customers. The industry front group operations aim to counter that narrative in a high-stakes fight – private utilities stand to lose billions of dollars in revenue should communities municipalize. The latest front is in Michigan, where the Ann Arbor Responsible Energy Coalition (A2rec) appears to be a local, grassroots organization opposing a public power campaign in the upper midwest city of about 123,000 people. But state filings show its mailing address was One Energy Plaza – the headquarters of DTE Energy, the deeply unpopular private utility giant that serves Ann Arbor. Campaign finance records show A2rec is funded with nearly $2m from DTE , its contractors , the utility lobby and an industry consultant behind other front operations against public power. …