AUTHOR=McKasy Meaghan , Yeo Sara K. TITLE=A Comparative Case Study of Electric Utility Companies’ Use of Energy Democracy in Strategic Communication JOURNAL=Frontiers in Communication VOLUME=Volume 3 - 2018 YEAR=2018 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/communication/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00010 DOI=10.3389/fcomm.2018.00010 ISSN=2297-900X ABSTRACT=
A substantial increase in distributed renewable energy resources is changing the face of the energy environment, leading to strategic communication efforts by key stakeholders. The energy democracy movement supports this transformation from fossil fuels to distributed renewable energy and aims for equitable involvement of publics in energy decision making. These tenets challenge utility company earnings as they are directly related to energy sales and infrastructure returns on investment. Proposals by electric utility companies to restructure net-metering policies as a solution to financial issues have been criticized as prohibitive to the success of renewable energy advancement. To address these disagreements, the Edison Electric Institute and a communication firm, Maslansky & Partners, created