•HRES 457 IH 
Whereas the electricity sector, along with the building and 
transportation sectors, is the leading source of United 
States greenhouse gas emissions, and with the transition 
off gas and petroleum products, there will be a substan-
tial need to expand electrification; 
Whereas scientists have highlighted the importance of imme-
diately halting all new fossil fuel infrastructure projects 
in the United States to meet 1.5 degree Celsius targets; 
Whereas major investor-owned utilities are not on track to 
meet national decarbonization goals and currently rely 
heavily on fossil fuels; 
Whereas the utilities crisis in Texas in 2021, grid failures in 
California, annual Atlantic hurricanes, Midwest heat 
waves, and West Coast wildfires act as potent examples 
of the failures of an investor-owned and heavily 
marketized system to ensure reliability and resilience to 
climate catastrophes; 
Whereas renewable energy resources, particularly solar plus- 
storage, microgrids, and other distributed sources provide 
climate and economic resilience benefits to communities; 
Whereas investor-owned utilities and the State utility com-
missions tasked to regulate them are failing to meet their 
collective mandates to serve the public interest and pro-
vide customers with just and reasonable electricity rates; 
Whereas in 2020 nearly 4,800,000 low-income households in 
the United States live in a state of energy insecurity in 
which they were unable to afford their energy bill; 
Whereas there is a fundamental conflict when shareholder 
gains determine the prices and accessibility of funda-
mental public goods; 
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•HRES 457 IH 
Whereas there are limited avenues for legitimate public par-
ticipation, transparency, and community wealth-building 
from existing investor-owned utility business models and 
regulations; 
Whereas private monopolies and market-centric models have 
proven incapable of managing the transition to renewable 
energy at the pace and scale necessary to address the cli-
mate crisis, and without intention to repair harms of the 
fossil fueled system to Black, indigenous, people of color, 
and low-wealth communities; 
Whereas investor-owned utilities, fossil fuel energy companies, 
and their industry associations fund and coordinate ob-
struction of renewable energy policies and programs, in-
cluding rooftop and community solar requirements and 
incentives; 
Whereas many investor-owned utilities have a history of abus-
ing relationships with legislators and regulators and pro-
moting disinformation to maintain the status quo fossil 
fuel system and protect profits; 
Whereas investor-owned utilities and fossil fuel energy com-
panies valuations are based evaluating fossil fuel infra-
structure over time frames incompatible with planetary 
survival; 
Whereas some existing public and cooperative utilities have 
serious yet resolvable issues related to governance, regu-
lation, legacy debt, and climate impacts that must be ac-
knowledged and overcome to develop an effective and 
100-percent renewable public utility system; and 
Whereas truly public ownership of utilities would allow for 
improved oversight, accountability, high-road labor stand-
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•HRES 457 IH 
ards, and public participation in renewable energy pro-
curement and deployment: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Rep-
resentatives that— 
(1) the United States must establish electricity 
as a basic human right and public good, and eradi-
cate the reliance on monopolized, profit-driven utility 
corporations and providers and the flawed regulatory 
regime that has failed to regulate these utilities in 
the public interest, and it must reimagine its power 
system to be just, equitable, antiracist, and climate- 
and disaster-resilient through establishing a publicly 
and community-owned power system, which should 
include principles such as— 
(A) public accountability over the system’s 
energy choices and funding for community-led 
program design; 
(B) a commitment to 100-percent renew-
able energy for newly established systems and 
prompt transition to 100-percent renewable en-
ergy by no later than 2030 for existing public 
and cooperative power systems; 
(C) equitable and transparent planning 
systems that include robust public involvement 
and are based in the public interest, with par-
ticular attention to repairing legacies of harm 
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and pollution in environmental justice commu-
nities; 
(D) wide-scale deployment of weatheriza-
tion and energy efficiency technologies to re-
duce energy consumption, boost resilience of 
poorly insulated homes, and fight energy pov-
erty, prioritizing communities of color and low- 
wealth communities first; 
(E) energy affordability to address egre-
gious energy burdens and energy poverty that 
disproportionately penalize rural communities 
and communities of color; and 
(F) a guarantee that the public power sys-
tem infrastructure and installed technologies 
are built with unionized labor and in a manner 
that upholds Buy America and Buy Clean 
standards, 
pays 
prevailing 
wages, 
honors 
project labor agreements, uses Department of 
Labor-registered apprenticeship programs, ad-
heres to local and equitable hiring standards, 
and maintains high environmental standards; 
(2) in pursuit of the above principles, the 
House of Representatives should strive to— 
(A) transition away from investor-owned 
utilities and marketized energy systems that 
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have collectively failed to meet climate and jus-
tice requirements, by acquiring them through 
the Federal Government and transitioning them 
to State, local, Tribal, or other appropriate 
scales of public ownership or alternatively 
transitioning them to community or cooperative 
ownership with the support of public dollars, 
and expand public investment and support for 
retraining and relocation to ensure comparable 
qualities of life and prevailing wages for com-
munities and workers currently dependent on 
the fossil fuel industry; 
(B) create an advisory body to assess op-
tions and plans for consistency with the prin-
ciples and objectives outlined in this resolution; 
(C) establish participation by worker rep-
resentatives from relevant industries, represent-
atives of affected communities, technical ex-
perts, advocacy groups, and others as appro-
priate, in order to ensure that concrete tech-
nologies, ownership structures, and administra-
tive and contractual arrangements are con-
sistent with the objectives articulated above; 
(D) assert Federal control and ownership 
over the transmission and associated grid assets 
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and make substantial investments in the grid’s 
resilience, health, weatherization, and capacity 
to allow for wide-scale distributed energy re-
sources to come online; 
(E) allocate Federal grants, loans, loan 
guarantees, and other financial instruments to 
municipal utilities and rural electric coopera-
tives to replace existing and planned fossil fuel 
infrastructure with distributed, cooperative re-
newable energy and these grants should be used 
to buy out stranded fossil fuel assets in ex-
change for these utilities to deploy 100-percent 
clean, renewable energy generation by 2030, the 
process which should include transparency 
mechanisms to ensure payments are reasonable 
in subtracting cleanup and other costs from the 
value of infrastructure, and federally fund 
State, local, and Tribal government procure-
ment of new renewable generation and trans-
mission infrastructure; 
(F) require all Federal public power pro-
viders, including the Tennessee Valley Author-
ity and power marketing agencies, to evaluate 
current procedural justice concerns to redefine 
a gold standard for accountable public and re-
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newable power utilities’ active accountability 
and participation, and to act as catalysts for 
the widespread development of climate-resilient 
renewable energy generation, in which signifi-
cant investments are made to ramp up solar 
and storage microgrids, which can be achieved 
through— 
(i) a 100-percent clean and renewable 
energy portfolio by 2030 at the latest, with 
a significant carveout for distributed solar 
and storage resources, and an immediate 
phaseout of fossil power; 
(ii) robust accountability and trans-
parency mechanisms to ensure a just and 
equitable transition and accountable man-
agement; 
(iii) an accountable Board for the 
Tennessee Valley Authority and systems of 
input for power marketing agencies under 
the Department of Energy that allow for 
transparency and public participation to 
help ensure just and equitable power 
choices and outcomes; 
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•HRES 457 IH 
(iv) strict requirements to remediate 
pollution from leaks and spills and clean 
up existing fossil fuel infrastructure; and 
(v) prioritization of union jobs with 
high-road labor standards that pay pre-
vailing wages; 
(G) facilitate the development of commu-
nity owned and controlled clean energy re-
sources by directing— 
(i) expansion of distributed energy re-
sources, including community and rooftop 
solar, microgrid technology, and storage, to 
boost climate and disaster resilience and 
ecological 
protection 
and 
restoration, 
prioritizing such systems for communities 
of color and low-wealth communities first; 
(ii) 
investment, 
including 
grants, 
loans, and other financial instruments, and 
technical support into community owned 
and controlled renewable generation re-
sources such as rooftop and community 
solar and storage as well as efficiency 
measures, including weatherization; 
(iii) additional direct investments, 
grants, and reparations to Black and In-
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digenous communities whose land was sto-
len, to support efforts, as determined by 
communities, for building out community- 
controlled renewable energy infrastructure 
(generation and distribution) in rural and 
disinvested communities; and 
(iv) complete electrification and en-
hanced efficiency of residential, commer-
cial, and industrial energy systems while 
taking explicit steps toward ensuring ra-
cial, environmental, and economic justice 
in the process; 
(H) empower energy democracy by expand-
ing engagement with the energy system toward 
building collective power; 
(I) create a Federal energy democracy 
screening tool that creates a process for identi-
fying and characterizing community energy 
problems and responding with climate justice 
energy solutions; 
(J) create transparent and equitable sys-
tems for public participation and cultivate proc-
esses for community governance over energy 
production, distribution, and procurement deci-
sions; 
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(K) create Federal guidelines and incen-
tives that enable communities and workers to 
have the power to hold public, cooperative, and 
investor-owned utilities accountable; 
(L) enact a universal ban on disconnec-
tions of electricity for nonpayment and enforce 
progressive residential electricity rate regula-
tions, including a cap on energy burdens and 
energy debt for low-wealth households; and 
(M) create Federal programs for reusing, 
recycling, and equitable and proper disposal of 
parts of panels, batteries, turbines, and other 
components at the end of life to prevent fur-
thering 
environmental 
injustice, 
pollution, 
waste, or international waste. 
Æ 
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