LoginMilwaukee municipal power effort follows path of other communities
Electric power lines. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
The typical We Energies customer using 660 kilowatt hours of energy per month is paying $144 each month for that power, according to Wisconsin Public Service Commission data. That bill is far higher than most other people in the state and has increased substantially in recent years.
Frustration with rising energy bills, increasing skepticism about investor-owned utilities, anxiety over the growth of data centers and fears about the rising cost of living led Milwaukee city officials last month to hold a meeting aimed at kickstarting debate about municipalization — the process of a local government taking over utility services.
In late June, Milwaukee’s Public Transportation, Utilities and Waterways Review Board held its first meeting since 2023 to discuss a city-owned electric utility.
There are dozens of municipal-owned utilities across Wisconsin providing residents with their water and power. Up north, Superior is in the midst of its own debate over acquiring the local water utility.
“The overarching concern and preference for municipalization is that there are no shareholders and hence no need for the elevated profits that the investor-owned utilities all receive,” Tom Content, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin, said in an email, noting that We Energies’ profits range from 10-13% on its various plants and projects. “Municipal utilities by their nature are more responsive to their local customers, because those customers are also the voters who elect the local government, as in the mayor or village chair who appoint the utility commissions.”
State law allows municipal governments to acquire utilities’ property through eminent domain or a negotiated purchase agreement.
Milwaukee is in the early stages of discussing the possibility. There are serious hurdles, including the fact that We Energies power generation does not take place within city limits, complications over how Act 10 would affect unionized utility workers and the prospect of facing a well-funded and well-connected opponent.
“The utilities have been generous donors to the incumbent party, whichever is in power, over the years,” Content said. “The reckoning and awakening of the public to affordability concerns and data centers is shifting the dynamic on this, which is why we see candidates of all stripes taking more pro-consumer positions like we are advocating for.”
He noted recent polling has shown Wisconsinites are against data center development and concerned about the cost of living.
“From CUB’s POV this all argues for an electorate that wants a reliable energy system that they can afford,” he continued. “And for We Energies customers that’s become more problematic because the typical [residential] bill has surged 30% since 2022, with another 14-15% in the offing for the next two years.”
Milwaukee Ald. Robert Bauman, who along with Ald. Alex Brower led the June meeting to start exploring the issue, told the Examiner that the debate will come down to determining if municipalization will reduce rates while maintaining reliable service.
“If someone can come forward and say I have a realistic way of structuring your rates so they’re not going up by as high a percentage and your power is just as reliable and there’s more accountability … that accountability is attractive,” Bauman said, noting he already gets calls complaining about the municipal water utility.
Milwaukee isn’t the first community across the country to consider taking on this fight. Clearwater, Florida, recently completed a feasibility study to take over its own electric utility.
Residents in Boulder, Colorado, began a fight to municipalize the local Xcel Energy in 2010, largely due to complaints that the company was dragging its feet on shifting to renewable sources of power. Several times over the next decade, local voters approved ballot measures affirming their desire to take control of the utility.
Ultimately, Boulder’s effort didn’t get across the finish line. But Leslie Glustrom, a Boulder resident who was active in the fight, told the Wisconsin Examiner that it wasn’t a failure. The threat of losing such a large customer base, she said, put enough leverage on Xcel that locals were able to push for significant policy concessions and the company has shifted away from its earlier dependence on fossil fuels. Xcel now states it will retire its final coal plant by 2030.
“You can achieve very important gains and make progress on very important objectives, independent of whether the municipalization effort succeeds or not,” she said.
In Michigan, residents of Ann Arbor have had a harder time, mostly because state law gives the power utility a permanent agreement to operate within its boundary area so residents don’t have the same leverage point.
But the effort to take over the utility has continued and resulted in the establishment of the city’s Sustainable Energy Utility. For now the SEU is running as a pilot in one neighborhood with plans to expand citywide next year.
Under the program, the city operates a service in which homes are outfitted with solar panels and backup batteries to provide energy for home use. The city still owns and maintains the infrastructure.
Brian Geiringer, executive director of Ann Arbor for Public Power, told the Examiner that the city’s lack of leverage, the power of the local utility and the poor reliability of the local service have made it attractive to push for full municipalization
“Our options are very limited, in a region where the [Investor-owned utility] has tons of power, both due to their monopoly status, the forever contract, but also in terms of the amount of lobbying they do of our state government,” he said. “We are left with very few options to sort of hold them accountable and really push back at all against their power.”
He added that the SEU was able to get off the ground because Ann Arbor had a well funded sustainability office, but that it offered a low-friction way to begin showing the benefits of public power.
“In Ann Arbor, the benefits of public power are so massive, in part, because our [investor-owned utility] has done such a poor job.” It has become clear to citizens, he added, that the benefits of the sustainable energy pilot project “really just start to scratch the surface of what we would be sort of leaving on the table if we don’t pursue full municipalization.”
