Want To Municipalize Your Utility? I Mean, Really?

DTE Energy is a disaster, as evidenced by its continued embrace of fossil fuels and its apocalypse-level outages. That doesn’t mean that a public option could do better. But there are some options for improving.

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Better Utility Regulation: How We Can Get Out Of This Mess

Too much regulation restricts innovation. But too little regulation does the same, and this is what we see in the crumbling infrastructure of Michigan, where regulators are asleep at the wheel in the name of a “business-friendly regulatory” environment that, as it turns out, is neither terribly regulatory nor terribly business-friendly.

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Centralization: Economy of Scale? Looming Disaster? Lil Bit of Both?

Streetcars, gas and water pipes, power lines, and other “invisible networks,” to borrow a line from the title of Ann Durkin Keating’s book, make up a vibrant history of infrastructure in which centralization vs. decentralization is a big debate.

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