In this episode author Michelle Moore of "Rural Renaissance" joins us to unveil the transformative potential of clean energy in America's small and rural communities. This episode offers an eye-opening perspective on how rural cooperatives and public power companies are not just energy providers, but economic drivers in small towns. Michelle's insights are an invitation to envision a future powered by more than just electricity, but by the values that underpin rural cooperatives and public power providers.
Show Notes:
Photo by Karsten Würth on Unsplash
Follow us on social media for more content related to each episode:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/booked-on-planning/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BookedPlanning
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bookedonplanning
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bookedonplanning/
In this episode author Michelle Moore of "Rural Renaissance" joins us to unveil the transformative potential of clean energy in America's small and rural communities. This episode offers an eye-opening perspective on how rural cooperatives and public power companies are not just energy providers, but economic drivers in small towns. Michelle's insights are an invitation to envision a future powered by more than just electricity, but by the values that underpin rural cooperatives and public power providers.
Show Notes:
Photo by Karsten Würth on Unsplash
Follow us on social media for more content related to each episode:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/booked-on-planning/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BookedPlanning
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bookedonplanning
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bookedonplanning/
This episode is brought to you by Olsen. Olsen is a nationally recognized, employee-owned engineering and design firm with a rich history of success, founded in 1956 on the very mindset that drives them today. They're here to improve communities by making them more sustainable, better connected and more efficient. Simply put, they work to leave the world better than they found it. They have more than 2,000 professionals and offer a comprehensive list of services, including planning and design, engineering, field services, environmental and technology.
Stephanie :You're listening to the Booked On Planning podcast, a project of the Nebraska chapter of the American Planning Association. In each episode we dive into how cities function by talking with authors on housing, transportation and everything in between. Join us as we get Booked On Planning. Welcome back, bookworms, to another episode of Booked On Planning. In this episode, we talk with author Michelle Moore on her book Rural Renaissance revitalizing America's hometowns through clean power. This title is a lesson in reading what comes after the colons, because when I first read Rural Renaissance, I thought it was a more general book about revitalizing our rural communities, which it is to an extent, but it really focuses on revitalization of small rural communities via clean energy and using the rural cooperatives and public power companies that brought electricity to these communities 100 years ago to further economic success originally, I was excited about the clean energy and public power aspects of the book.
Jennifer:Public power districts have always been a bit of a pet topic for me Since growing up in Nebraska. I was always fascinated by our unique state governance, which is based in the populist movement from the 1920s and 30s. So public power districts go hand in hand with that form of governmental control, and Nebraska is the only 100% public power state. So learning how we could leverage that unique trait was really interesting.
Stephanie :And while the book is all about clean energy, it's not just focused on the supply side, but on the demand side as well. There's an entire chapter devoted to energy efficiency programs that allow owners to reduce their high power bills by using less energy. A utility may have affordable rates, but if the older home is leaking conditioned air it won't really matter.
Jennifer:Many of the programs seemed so simple to implement. I'm surprised more jurisdictions aren't jumping on board to take advantage of them. The equity discussion around clean energy was also interesting, considering things like who purchases older homes and who generally engages in local politics.
Stephanie :I was really struck by Michelle's foundational principles and what drives her to work in this field. She returns a few times during our conversation to the idea of loving your neighbor and sharing abundance and resources, a principle that should be at the foundation of electric cooperatives and public power companies but, as she demonstrated in the book, has often been lost over the decades since their founding.
Jennifer:Let's get into our conversation on revitalizing America's hometown through clean power.
Stephanie :Michelle, thank you for joining us on Booked on Planning to talk about your book Rural Renaissance revitalizing America's hometowns through clean power. As the title suggests, your book is all about rural cooperatives and public power companies and their ability to revitalize rural communities. To give our listeners, who may not be really well-versed in electric generation, as a background, can you explain the difference between these two types of electric companies and their history with power generation?
Michelle Moore:Well, I will start with a headline in my thinking, in my mind and my exploration of these issues in rural renaissance, rural cooperative utilities and municipal utilities, america's public power utilities they're really the heroes of the clean energy economy.
Michelle Moore:They were the heroes of electrification back in the 1930s when they were created. Because, unlike investor-owned utilities IOUs as they're usually called which are owned by stockholders, you know, far off on Wall Street, public power utilities, municipal utilities and rural electric cooperative utilities are local, they're locally controlled, they're owned by their member customers or they're owned by the municipality, by the unit of government, and economic development is fundamental to their purpose. I mean dating back to the 1920s and 1930s when public power and rural cooperatives were really just beginning to blossom. They existed to bring power to the farm because nobody else would do it, and getting electricity into our rural communities was absolutely essential to easing the burden, you know, of farm labor, easing the burden of women's labor at that time too, very importantly and also just creating more economic opportunities. So they are so beautifully suited to the moment and I am just so excited about what they can do.
Jennifer:There is a lot of technical and very practical advice throughout the book. So of course, we recommend everyone just pick up the book. We're not going to walk through every piece of advice that you provide and there are also what I thought to be very empowering case studies. So who's your intended audience for this book, given all of the advice that runs through it?
Michelle Moore:I wrote Rural Renaissance for local leaders and it could be a local utility leader, it could be a local county commissioner, it could be a business or a civic leader who's just very active in their community. And, as you shared, you know, there's a lot of technical information, a lot of practical advice. There's one chapter that has a whole lot of acronyms because in the energy space you just kind of can't get away from it. But I also really wrote the book for people to be able to read it all the way through or to pick it up and digest individual chapters that were most applicable, Like if you live in a community where the houses are old and people's energy bills are very high because homes are so inefficient, read the energy efficiency chapter, you know.
Michelle Moore:If you're interested in solar, pick up the book and check out the chapter on solar and read about rural electric cooperative and municipal utility business models and how they can go together. Or if you're interested in resilience, if you you know you really want to get energy storage into your community because a lot of storms roll through and you want the power to be able to stay on no matter what, Check out the chapter on resilience. That's really who it's written for, and I hope that folks who pick it up, folks who read it, will find some idea in it that they can go home and implement. That would be my dream.
Jennifer:I know, even given the fact that I have an extensive background in public power, I actually like have a book all about the history of Nebraska's public power and how we got there. We have already established in this podcast Stephanie and I are pretty big nerds. I found reading about how to bring down electrical bills in homes. I had no idea and I just found it so helpful and I started thinking like I should probably get an energy efficiency study done on my home and see where I can start filling in gaps, because my home was built in 1952. So I bet I've got some large, bright red signs on that energy efficiency study.
Michelle Moore:Energy efficiency. It's the least God love it. It's the least sexy tool in the clean energy toolbox. It's literally behind the walls, but so many people have high power bills.
Michelle Moore:I think about my home region in the Southeast.
Michelle Moore:The energy burdens are tremendous. You know, in one rural county in Georgia the average energy burden and energy burden is a measure of the percentage of your total household income that you spend on, you know, heating and cooling and keeping the lights on in your home One rural county's average energy burden for low income residents is over 39%. I mean, imagine spending nearly 40% of your whole household income on your electricity bill. It's outrageous. And it's not because the rates are high. The rates are low, it's because people's homes are so inefficient and there's so much that we can do with energy efficiency to make our homes, you know, more comfortable and cost less to operate. But also, when we think about rural communities, to really preserve housing into the next generation, especially in communities that have just had so much out migration and so much job loss and suffer so much from persistent poverty, where homes are maybe falling into disrepair to where families wouldn't even be able to carry them into the next generation, energy efficiency can be a part of that, housing preservation and ultimately also housing equity strategy.
Stephanie :So what are some of the common issues that arise with rural electorate cooperatives and nonprofits, and what can be done to fix them?
Michelle Moore:In the moment that we're in, you know, with funding and financing from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Uncle, ira and Bill, as you folks in DC often call them one of the biggest challenges for rural institutions, for utilities for municipalities, for nonprofits, is capacity, and capacity is just a fancy word for saying that there are not enough people to be able to fill out all the applications and track all the grant opportunities and do all the compliance stuff you have to do to bring funding down to really help make sure that that money lands in the communities that need it most. You know that can put it to best use to be able to close economic gaps with energy and infrastructure funding and I have been so encouraged to see that philanthropy all over the country is beginning to move into those spaces to invest specifically in building rural capacity. So investing specifically in rural institutions with dollars, with people or with technical support to help folks go, get the money and bring it home. As when I wrote Rural Renaissance, there was no Inflation Reduction Act, there was no Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and, to tell you the truth, it was also a moment where I didn't know that there was really any hope of having any such thing in the near term. But now, with those dollars out there and dollars that through our public power utilities, our municipal utilities and through our rural electric cooperatives, we could really closely marry those energy investments with great economic outcomes for our local communities too, it's so important to press in and if you do have capacity, if you do have expertise to come alongside rural institutions to go get the money and bring it home.
Michelle Moore:And depending on where you are in the country, there have also been some historic challenges with those institutions which are they were built to be energy democracies from their very origins.
Michelle Moore:Even if you look at the tax code for 501C 12, switch your nonprofit cooperatives. One of the tests for whether or not you qualify as a 501C 12 nonprofit cooperative is democratic control. Little d, you know. Democratic control, open elections, transparency, you know. But in the hundred years since they've been created, their cooperatives, and governance of public power utilities to that, have drifted away from that ideal where board memberships may be passed down from generation to generation, where bylaws aren't transparently available to the members and, you know, even just from a communications perspective, where local community members made on understand that as a member of a cooperative utility, they actually own the utility too. They're member owners, you know, they're not just customers. So really deeply understanding and reviving and revitalizing those democratic roots of our local utilities is another really important opportunity to understand as we move into this moment where there is so much potential for reinvesting in rural America and making sure that clean energy futures are also connected to thriving communities in a way that's very consistent, you know, with the founding of these institutions a hundred years ago.
Jennifer:I think it's really interesting that you're talking about reviving democracy through public power. Nebraska is 100% public power state. In the 1920s we revamped our government into a unicameral system based on populism. I mean it was kind of riding that populist wave of the 1920s. And right now there's a very interesting struggle in our unicameral going between the democratic small d democratic norms that our unicameral was based upon, that the open meetings acts that we all have put in place from it were meant to serve, and it's starting to collapse in on itself, basically just reversing everything that Nora stood for and everything that really our unicameral and our public power system stands for. And it's been frustrating to watch our public power districts collapse in on themselves, watch our unicameral collapse in on itself. And so I was reading through and I was like exactly this it's so frustrating to know that these are the principles upon which we have built our entire state government and watch them fall apart. It makes me scream.
Michelle Moore:I understand, I do and I do want to just really uplift Nebraska and Senator Norris from Nebraska as well. He's the father of public power in America and he was a key author and critically important in the TVA Act and creating the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is still the nation's largest public power utility today, and something that I think we you know, we perhaps under appreciate because we're in such a moment in our nation and our local communities and our world where there's a lot of change. You know, there's a tremendous amount of change and most people don't like change, whether it's for the better or for the worse. Most people just like things to be kind of steady and predictable, which I understand. I've always been a change kind of person, but there's some days when I just want to like turn it off, just listen to the pause button, listen to the easy button for a little while.
Michelle Moore:But you know, in moments of tremendous change where we're having to make decisions as a society, as a nation, as a state, as a, you know it doesn't matter what unit of community that you're at, that you were picking this path or that path. There are tremendous differences between generations. There are tremendous differences between perspectives that come to the table. It really illustrates that democracy is hard, you know, little d, democracy is hard but it's worth it, it's beautiful and it's one of the best things that, you know, I believe, that we have ever done as a nation. I love our constitution, I love our democracy and I am always hopeful hopeful, but hopeful as an action verb, right, not just hopeful as oh maybe, but hopeful as like get out there and hope with your feet.
Michelle Moore:You know that we'll be able to discover, through all the turmoil that we're going through, that conflict, when it's rooted in respect and love, can be creative and that, in those same kind of vein of our founding principles, that populism, little p, populism and pluralism too, they go hand in hand. Diversity is part of that as well, you know. It assumes that you make better decisions with diverse points of view at the table, you know, rather than just trying to kill each other and beat each other up over it. So you know, perhaps with all the turmoil that Nebraska is experiencing just like Nebraska was the, you know, birthplace of public power in America that through the turmoil, through the challenges that Nebraska is experiencing, perhaps it can be a rebirth place of those ideas too in a contemporary era, you know, where we have so many other challenges that we have to grapple with, and we really have to figure out how to modernize these models too.
Jennifer:That's a great point and besides protecting little democracy and promoting little p populism, your opening chapter talks a lot about centering and protecting the public good overall. So can you discuss how public utilities are actually somewhat in a unique position to highlight this way about thinking of end quotation marks, since this is a podcast profitability?
Michelle Moore:Absolutely One of the things that I found when I was doing the research for my book. There was this really fascinating article that I found as a footnote and a PhD thesis. It's one of the sources that I used in the book, but it was this fascinating little article that talked about the emergence of and I'm using little quote marks to the economy. Before the 1950s, the economy was typically talked about as an economic systems in service to right, the economy in service to the nation, the economy in terms of its service to the home, the household, household economics. But somehow in the 1950s we started talking about the economy as being like this thing that exists above us, somehow that human activity serves the economy, that policy serves the economy, which became, even in the literature, more and more disconnected from people. And it really made me kind of sit back and think because the end of the day, from my perspective I know not everybody would think this way money's only good for the good it does for people. It's about the people, it's not about the profit. The profit doesn't matter unless it's serving the people. And with investor-owned utilities who are owned by shareholders, many times they're very, very disconnected from even sort of where the money is, and shareholders who are disconnected from the communities that utilities serve. Profitability becomes a concept that's very disconnected from the customers, local community members, other stakeholders, and so you can get this chasm right between the way investor-owned utilities engage and this is about the model. By the way, I want to be very clear about this. This is about the people who work at investor-owned utilities, who are committed to community, who are neighbors, heroic linemen who go out and not only maintain their systems but help neighboring systems too. Talking about the models, the economic systems and the flow of funds, the profitability goes somewhere else. The people who want that profitability aren't the people who live in the community and who are impacted by rate increases or lack of service or lack of support when people have a hard time paying their bills. The public power model is very different. The cooperative model is very, very different, because that notion of profitability is really about reinvesting in the community and it's local members who own the utility and who make decisions about where that profit goes. And it makes public power and cooperative utilities really uniquely positioned to be able to make sure that energy and the economic systems that is all connected to are serving the people, not serving this thing called the economy that somehow has come to control us and control our decision-making, as I also share in the book.
Michelle Moore:For me personally, my faith is central to my work. I'm a Christian. I think about every day how can our energy systems demonstrate how to love your neighbor as yourself and, from that perspective, putting the economy on a pedestal or putting profitability on a pedestal over what love for your neighbor would demand that you do as idolatrous and unpicking those systems and understanding and unpicking just bad values, bad values straight up. You know that, if crept into not just the way that we work but our assumptions about the way things work, period is an opportunity that we have these days and said nobody better to do it than our public power and cooperative utilities when it comes to energy, because it's what they were built for us, what they did in the 1930s, it's what they can do in the 2020s.
Stephanie :So, speaking of reinvesting in our communities, and you talk about this and we already talked about this a little bit with energy efficiency programs being able to reinvest in the homes that are in our communities but you make the connection in the book between a history of racial segregation and energy efficiency in homes. Can you talk about how they go hand in hand and how communities can right these wrongs?
Michelle Moore:Absolutely. Energy efficiency and the lack of energy efficiency, energy burdens are deeply entwined with energy, with segregationist policies and housing and racist laws and practices like redlining, where black and African-American communities were starved of investment, starved of access to financing to improve homes, buy homes, build businesses, build neighborhoods In the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s. They were also starved of the access to economic opportunity too, even with how many cities built their infrastructure. I mean, how many of us have lived in places where an interstate runs through the community and divides black and African-American communities and cuts them off from access to urban core, jobs, transit, you name it. And the same is true even at the individual housing level.
Michelle Moore:In my hometown, in my community, homes that were built in the 1940s for black and African-American workers and the cotton mills weren't built right. The Tex-Hall mill villages, as they're called, it's like vernacular architecture all over the south. They're neat, tidy little wooden boxes. But then the homes that were built for the black and African-American community many times those homes weren't even constructed with a bathroom, they still had outhouses. And if you go in the homes today, the only bathroom in the house is on the back of the house. That built kind of like a shotgun shack, if you will, and that bathroom is on what would have been a porch, a laundry porch, and you can see light through the floorboards.
Michelle Moore:So when we begin to unpick why some homes, why some neighborhoods have such extraordinary energy burdens, as its roots in racism, and as we look at how we invest in energy efficiency, we can shift our perspective so that investments in energy efficiency and, similarly, investments in solar and resilience can also do justice. When we think about not only the opportunity for our clean energy futures to support thriving, to support economic opportunity, to support healthier futures for people, to support people's well-being, they can also support more just outcomes. Where we're understanding what was done wrong and what was done deliberately wrong deliberately to hurt people, still hurting people today we can unpick that and make it right.
Jennifer:As with almost everything in life, there is no one-size-fits-all for energy futures. Discussing how we can use energy futures to create justice and maybe help democracy to people who might not be as in the know with energy, can you explain why there isn't a one-size-fits-all energy future and then how there are a lot of different, already proven models that governing bodies can look to for support in transforming their own energy futures?
Michelle Moore:To me, understanding why we have local energy futures plural really begins in the practice of gratitude. If we look around and we think, what are the places that we live have an abundance? What do we have an abundance that we can share with others, and then we think, what do we need that we need to get from others? That begins to really illuminate how beautifully diverse the places that we live are. In some places you may have very dense environments, a lot of houses, a lot of buildings, kind of close to one another. You may have policy incentives that make solar more valuable. Other places you may have a lot of land. We all have something to contribute to the picture here. But what that means by implication is that we're not all going to do it the same way, and I often feel like the national and we shall generously call it a national narrative it's been a little bit more like a national food fight for the past several decades over climate and clean energy policy kind of makes it feel like we all have to do the same thing the same way to get to a better future, and it's just not true. It's not true because of the blessings that we each enjoy in the diverse places that we live, and it's not true because America's not built that way.
Michelle Moore:We were talking about founding principles, and one of the founding principles of our country is federalism.
Michelle Moore:States have a lot of saying things In some states, localities have a lot of saying things, and so we also have as citizens we have access to a lot of governing bodies, these self-governing opportunities that don't require us to ask Washington's permission to do anything or that don't require us to wait on Washington to move before we can act.
Michelle Moore:And looking not just within your state, but looking at states that maybe have similar blessings, states that have similar governing cultures and governing models and Nebraska's state system of governance is very different from my home state of Georgia's and thinking about how we can adopt those models is a wonderful source of opportunity and inspiration. And again, for public power utilities and for rural electric cooperatives, you've got a particular opportunity because all but 14 states consider local utilities to be locally governed, so you don't even have to ask a state regulator. You can make decisions that we want to develop local power, we want clean power, we want to share power, we want to go get some USDA money and help fix people's houses so they're more energy efficient, you can just go do it. I think that that's wonderful and I think it's entrepreneurial and it's innovative and it just gives us so much agency over our own clean energy futures. And it's not something that the way that we talk about this stuff, at least in the news or whatever it's not necessarily impression yet, but it's the truth.
Stephanie :In the opposite direction from being able to just go out and do it and having a lot of support. There are plenty of examples out there where there's laws and regulations in place that make it really challenging to do clean energy, renewable energy and I know it's not one size fits all, they're all kind of different, but what are some of the most common laws or restrictions that inhibit creation of renewable energy systems that we should be looking at or communities should be looking to change?
Michelle Moore:I'll give you an example. I'm sitting in Alabama having this conversation with y'all today, and Alabama has a policy that everyone who lives in the investor-owned utility territory here has to grapple with, and it's commonly known as the Alabama solar tax. The utility actually charges you if you have solar on your house. It charges you on a per megawatt hour basis and it makes solar even residential solar on your own property, your own property. It makes it economically just as not doable, makes it too expensive because you have to pay the utility to do something on your house, which just doesn't make any sense at all to me.
Michelle Moore:But there are a lot of places around the country that have to grapple with policies that are maybe not quite as egregious as that, but that have a similar effect.
Michelle Moore:What my thought would be and how to tackle that and it's an approach I've taken myself is there are so many places that you can begin, when we talk about clean energy, that would give you the potential to build momentum, and to build momentum in a way that you know doesn't have to go through very, very difficult problems like the Alabama solar tax to untangle, but they kind of let you go around them.
Michelle Moore:One suggestion I would commend to anybody listening, and one that I think really meets the needs of people where they are today, even where they kind of are in their hearts and feeling concerned or even maybe a little bit scared about the power going off.
Michelle Moore:What that would mean extreme weather, you know, tornadoes, deep freezes I mean you name it is resiliency centers, community resiliency centers.
Michelle Moore:And resiliency centers are solar and energy storage with little microgrid and it means for it could be your home, but from a community perspective, at a local church or community of faith, local school, local recreation center, community center, you have a gathering place where the light stays on, the heat stays on, the AC stays on, whatever the case may be, where people can gather and take refuge and feel safe, particularly if you live in a place that is exposed to more and more extreme weather and is at risk of the light standoff for a longer time. And resiliency is something that in my experience, maybe not everybody but most folks can agree on, and it also gives people and communities as a whole and governing bodies, you know the opportunity to have an experience with the benefits that clean energy can bring, the benefits of solar, being able to generate and own your own power, not having to be dependent on something far away that can go down you can't really control. That is a really helpful place to start.
Jennifer:Lincoln has a few places for people when the power goes down, where the generators come on, and I'm from a teeny, tiny town in Western Nebraska where, if the power goes down, you're just out for a day at least, probably takes so long for our linemen to get out there. So when I moved into not really a very large city but a larger population than I was from, I did feel safer. I know that there is somewhere that I can go and I can be warm or cold or so. Resiliency is so important.
Michelle Moore:It is, and for many of our most vulnerable neighbors, you know think about elders who not only have to keep medicine like insulin refrigerated, but people who have respiratory challenges, who have to have an oxygen concentrator that they plug in just to be able to breathe, you know, so they don't suffocate. Having access to power is literally the difference between life and death, and one of the benefits that solar and energy storage has over conventional or traditional diesel generators is that it's clean and you don't have all that particulate pollution. That's making you a little bit safer at the same time that it's keeping the lights on. So, as you say, just does make you feel safer and it's just a good thing for our communities.
Jennifer:See, that's a great point that I didn't even think of. All I was thinking was hey, we got a generator, we could have a solar generator, it would be better. So, being that Stephanie and I are both from Nebraska and we've brought up Nebraska a few times, anybody else in the state that picks up this book might notice that we're not mentioned all that often, or well, I think, like one time. So how come Nebraska got left out of the discussion?
Michelle Moore:Well, I would say with love for Nebraska is America's public power state, and with love for Senator Norris and all the great things that he did for the entirety of the country. When I was researching examples of wonderful you know local leadership in clean energy innovation, I just didn't find any in Nebraska. Now, that may have been my oversight as a researcher. If anybody has examples out there, email me, hit me up on LinkedIn, tell me I was wrong. I hope that someone will prove me wrong. Or, with the great opportunities in the Inflation Reduction Act, that Nebraska will catch up on the innovation front, and one of the next times I'm having this conversation they'll be a great example from Nebraska. That uplift maybe from someone who's listening to us today.
Jennifer:I sure hope so, because I kept thinking all like every every time I saw a new case study or a new model in the book we could be doing that. We already have the model in place. So I don't know of anything to prove you wrong on, but I hope that somebody can either call us out or prove us wrong soon.
Stephanie :I feel like a couple of our power providers probably have some good case studies. They just aren't good at promoting themselves, maybe. So you conclude the book by saying that if we merely transform the technology, but not the underlying systems and values, we will build a clean energy dystopia that widens existing wealth and health disparities. How can we avoid falling into the strap?
Michelle Moore:Well, systems produce outcomes according to the values that they're founded on, and we just focus on the technology. We're just kind of, you know, tinkering with the gears and levers, but we're not really changing long term outcomes. And at a moment like this, when there's so much money, you know, flowing into the energy system, it's a great opportunity to really step back and deeply inquire about the values around which our energy systems are built we were talking about a little bit earlier. Now, are we prioritizing profit at the expense of people? Are we prioritizing profit and service to people? I mean, that alone is a really incredibly important distinction.
Michelle Moore:One of the things that I suggest in the conclusion of rural renaissance is for us to really deliberately and intentionally identify the values that we want to build our local energy futures around. One that I suggest is to put the public back in public utilities Talk about the public utilities, making sure people are at the center. And another that I suggest is to repair, restore and do justice, you know, be very intentional about understanding how you know we ended up with such great housing disparities and disparities and energy burden, and make sure that we're putting our money where our values are. But the first, most important step is just to have the conversation about values and to know how we got here, know where we want to go, and don't just think about the widget and PS, don't just think about the carbon, don't just think about the climate outcomes. You know, really think holistically and understand how we want, from my perspective, to love and to serve one another through the way that we're building the energy systems that are going to power us for the next 100 years. Thank, you.
Jennifer:So it's booked on planning. Obviously we're book nerds around here. What is at least one? We're not limiting you to one. We've had some people come up with about sevens. No pressure to come up with seven either. What's at least one book you would recommend that our readers pick up to learn more.
Michelle Moore:So the book I'm going to suggest is one that I actually haven't read yet, but it's one that literally showed up on my radar this morning and I'm looking forward to reading because I think it has some really important lessons probably lessons for what not to do or cautionary details that anybody contemplating public power or utility matters could learn a little something from.
Michelle Moore:And the book is called California Burning, and it's by a woman named Catherine Blunt, and it's about what happened to PG&E, a utility out in California that is perhaps one of the nation's first climate casualties among our utilities, and speaks to how some of the impacts on our landscapes, on our weather, of climate change are really transforming what the resilience requirements of our energy systems are too.
Michelle Moore:So I'm looking forward to picking it up and taking a read, and, as we're thinking about rebuilding our local energy futures too, we want them to be resilient, we want them to be prepared for the future, not built on the past, and understanding the cautionary tales out, there is part of what we need to do too. In addition to a really energy centric book like California Burning, the other place that I find incredible daily inspiration is just in the Bible in a year, reading that I do every day and that value space inquiry. You know that question around how do we love our neighbors as ourselves or our energy system. Not a day goes by that I don't find inspiration in my reading. So it can be a new book that's coming out like nonfiction, or it could be your daily devotion practice, just bringing those ideas into questions around our energy systems.
Stephanie :Well, thank you so much for taking the time today to talk with us about your book Rural Renaissance. This has been a really great conversation and we definitely recommend that our listeners check out your book.
Michelle Moore:Thank, you so much. It's been wonderful to spend this time with y'all. I appreciate it.
Jennifer:We hope you enjoyed this conversation with author Michelle Moore on her book Rural Renaissance revitalizing America's hometown through clean power. You can get your own copy through the publisher at islandpressorg and check out the other great titles we've covered. While you're there, Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts and please rate, review and share the show. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time on Booked. On Planning.