The World Changing Podcast

Flo asks: "Are our power utilities businesses or part of the government?" The answer is pretty murky. How did most power utilities in the US become investor owned, publicly traded companies with no competition? In this episode, Greg and I try to address these questions. We look into the history of power utilities in the U.S. and try to imagine how the current “business model” could be innovated. How we use power has changed a lot since 1882, but the companies and business models that serve us, have not. Today we have all kinds of energy consumers - large and small - depending on the power grid for anything from producing pharmaceutical drugs to powering your home air conditioning. Additionally, customers increasingly want to both consume and produce green energy (solar PV etc). Seems like we need our power grids and the businesses that run them to innovate. But what will incentivize this innovation when they have no competition? Let's discuss.