Paul Fenn Wants to Give Your Electric Company the Boot

Paul Fenn is a little-known consultant with an academic bent, but he may be the utility industry’s enemy No. 1. For more than 25 years he’s been pushing the idea that local communities ought to be able to set up their own power agencies to compete with established utilities. Local control, he says, can produce lower rates and greater use of renewable energy.

Fenn’s campaign is finally getting traction, especially in green-minded California. His efforts are another disruption to the nation’s once dominant utilities, which have already been diminished by energy deregulation and the proliferation of solar installations. The combination of local power providers and rooftop solar panels last year took an estimated 25 percent of the state’s retail electricity business away from the big, investor-owned utilities. That could rise to 85 percent within about 10 years, regulators say.