Empowering Electricity

Julie L. MacArthur is a lecturer in politics and international relations and in the Master of Public Policy program at the University of Auckland, where she teaches environmental politics and public policy. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on community participation in renewable energy systems. Her work has been published by Monthly Review, International Journal, Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, the International Handbook of Environment and Social Policy, and by Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science.

Empowering Electricity is an empirically-grounded contribution to the literature on citizen engagement and energy policy in Canada. In particular, it provides a fresh take on BC energy politics that gets beyond the entrenched public/private dichotomy to explore one possible middle ground. While MacArthur implies that electricity co-operatives have the potential to erode public power in BC, her suggestion of co-operatives partnering with municipalities and First Nations may actually offer a new, politically viable approach to public power develpment that is both more democratic and locally acceptable than the current model. - Nichole Dusyk (BC Studies)

• Preface and AcknowledgmentsAbbreviations1 A Climate for Change2 Governing Sustainability: From Crisis to Empowerment3 Co-operatives in Canadian Political Economy4 International Forces for Power-Sector Restructuring5 Continental, Private, and Green(er)? Canadian Electricity Restructuring6 Electricity Co-operatives: The Power of Public Policy7 Off the Ground and on the Grid: New Electricity Co-operative Development8 Co-operative Networks and the Politics of Community Power9 Empowering ElectricityAppendicesNotesGlossaryReferencesIndex