The ongoing & upcoming debate

In the wake of the US blackout we'll probably hear new calls for privatization of power production/distribution (no matter that the failure appears to have started in a private system.) Some insight into the history of public power is here in this interesting blog from a rock-ribbed Republican state.

Nebraska is unique not just for its nonpartisan unicameral legislature but also for its approach to electrical utilities. As this Web site explains, Nebraska is "the only state in the country served entirely publicly owned power entities."

That's right. Public power districts have supplied the entirety of the state's electricity, without significant controversy,since the end of World War II.

As I live in a city which owns its own power production and transmission facilities, I tend to favor "the way we do it here." (At heart I am a conservative and do not like change; as a traditionalist I'll stick with the familial Democratic liberalism.)

My own particular insight was formed back in the 1970s. I was then a very junior planner with the City of Seattle and so was able to observe the process fairly closely. City Light (our electric utility and what a great name!) wanted to buy into (yet more) nuclear power plants. There was sufficient controversy (actually enormous controversy) about the potential investment so that our City Council started its own energy-planning process and to make a very long and interesting story short, declined to invest. With private power, we rate-payers/customers would have had no influence and would now be saddled with the costs (financial and otherwise) of what turned out to be failed nuclear power plants. Public ownership made the investment a political decision and thankfully took it out of the hands of the so-called energy experts.

Comments

[TM Lutas]

The problem with this reasoning is that while in individual instances public decision making ends up turning out better, in the aggregate it turns out worse by any possible sane measure.

Policy needs to be done so that the aggregate decisions turn out better, not by picking and choosing the favorable exceptions.

I'll leave others to discuss the entire nuclear power debate and how it's precisely public decision making that makes nuclear power more expensive.