IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jpolrf/v23y2020i2p120-137.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Capacity, sustainability, and the community benefits of municipal utility ownership in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • George C. Homsy

Abstract

Most literature on utility sustainability focuses on internal operations; this misses the role that utilities could play within a community. This study measures the impact of municipal ownership of water and electric utilities on the sustainability policymaking of local governments. I find that municipalities with government-owned water utilities adopt more sustainability measures than those with investor-owned service. Similarly, municipally-owned electric utilities have higher levels of energy sustainability in the community, but not in government operations. The utilities provide fiscal and technical capacity to municipalities. Interdepartmental coordination also strongly predicts sustainability policymaking. This study brings potential community benefits to the discussion of private investment in public service delivery.

Suggested Citation

  • George C. Homsy, 2020. "Capacity, sustainability, and the community benefits of municipal utility ownership in the United States," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(2), pages 120-137, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jpolrf:v:23:y:2020:i:2:p:120-137
    DOI: 10.1080/17487870.2018.1515014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17487870.2018.1515014
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/17487870.2018.1515014?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hess, David J. & Jordan, Megan L., 2023. "Demunicipalization as political process: Strategic action and the sale of municipal electric utilities in the United States," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    2. Joshua A. Basseches & Rebecca Bromley-Trujillo & Maxwell T. Boykoff & Trevor Culhane & Galen Hall & Noel Healy & David J. Hess & David Hsu & Rachel M. Krause & Harland Prechel & J. Timmons Roberts & J, 2022. "Climate policy conflict in the U.S. states: a critical review and way forward," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 170(3), pages 1-24, February.
    3. Soyoung Kim, 2021. "Integration of Policy Decision Making for Sustainable Land Use within Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-10, September.
    4. Ligorio, Lorenzo & Caputo, Fabio & Venturelli, Andrea, 2022. "Sustainability disclosure and reporting by municipally owned water utilities," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    5. Marc Kalina & Ncebakazi Makwetu & Elizabeth Tilley, 2024. "“The rich will always be able to dispose of their waste”: a view from the frontlines of municipal failure in Makhanda, South Africa," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 26(7), pages 17759-17782, July.
    6. Paul Nix & Adam Goldstein & Michael Oppenheimer, 2024. "Models of sub-national U.S. quasi-governmental organizations: implications for climate adaptation governance," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 177(6), pages 1-21, June.
    7. Lonergan, Katherine Emma & Sansavini, Giovanni, 2022. "Business structure of electricity distribution system operator and effect on solar photovoltaic uptake: An empirical case study for Switzerland," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jpolrf:v:23:y:2020:i:2:p:120-137. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/GPRE19 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.