Advancing transformative sustainability: A comparative analysis of electricity service and supply innovators in the United States

摘要

The electricity sector is undergoing rapid and dramatic change. The momentum ofsustainable energy technologies and business model innovation is giving rise to a“polycentric” framework of policy innovation and action organized by institutionsthat support customer choice and give customers the means to become electricitygenerators and service providers in their own right. These local experiments willhave to deliver transformative change, flexibly address the electricity sector's legacyof political and administrative complexity, achieve scale and financial sustainability,and enable greater and wider stakeholder participation and choice. Thisarticle reviews the evidence to date of the importance of these experiments andexamines three innovators—municipal utilities, community choice aggregators,and the sustainable energy utility—to gauge the capacity of pioneers to addressclimate-driven and other challenges in the electricity market.