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

As communities push for publicly owned electricity, private utilities may be deploying dark money and local front groups to stop them

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.