Louisiana
He Made Louisiana History. Now He Wants to Change the State’s Climate Future.
“You’re going to see me,” Davante Lewis instructed the gang.
It was late February, and Lewis was chatting with a classroom-sized group that had gathered in a senior heart in St. James Parish, a rural stretch of southeast Louisiana alongside a beneficiant bend of the Mississippi River. The event was a Black Historical past Month celebration hosted by Inclusive Louisiana, an environmental justice nonprofit preventing the extractive business and led by Black elders within the parish. Close by, a dense matrix of petrochemical amenities crowded the riverbank, towering over properties, faculties, and fields quickly to be thick with corn and sugarcane. This space is only one a part of an 85-mile industrial hall broadly referred to as Most cancers Alley. That grim moniker, and the environmental hazards it conjures up, happened due to the actions—or inactions—of generations of absent politicians and regulators.
Lewis, 31, intends to interrupt that mould—and he’s in an excellent place to take action, as a result of he’s now a Louisiana public service commissioner—one in every of simply 5 elected officers tasked with overseeing utilities throughout the state. Furthermore, he’s a break from the previous in some very literal methods. He’s the primary overtly LGBTQ individual elected to a statewide workplace in Louisiana, and the primary Black LGBTQ individual elected to any political workplace within the state, at any degree.
Because the room quieted, Lewis elaborated. He pledged to have common city halls and quarterly pop-up places of work throughout the parish and the remainder of his district, which spans components of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and the parishes between each cities, alongside the river. He promised to be again within the spring, earlier than hurricane season. He stated that folks may come to him with issues with their utility payments, and that he would assist them kind issues out. He would even ring up the electrical utility Entergy Louisiana, which he now regulates.
“We are able to get on the telephone collectively. ‘Let’s name Entergy proper now and get this case solved,”’ he stated. “Inform your neighbors. Inform your pals.”
There was pleasure within the crowd. “I like the concept of satellite tv for pc places of work within the parish,” stated Jo Banner, a founding father of the Descendants Mission, a bunch at present preventing the constructing of a close-by grain elevator. “It’s so essential for our group. I’m simply actually happy to see that he’s engaged and reveals up.”
Lewis identified to his viewers that the Public Service Fee is partially culpable for the poisonous fumes that blanket Most cancers Alley, that are linked to greater most cancers danger. Whereas the fee doesn’t have the direct authority to stop firms like those in Most cancers Alley from establishing store within the state, it does regulate the state’s fossil-fuel-dependent electrical energy grid. When the grid falters, he famous, petrochemical vegetation typically resort to flaring, burning off extra gasoline and chemical substances because the operation strikes offline. It’s a well-known web site throughout St. James Parish, the torch-like flames rising unpredictably from slender stacks, and it has principally been allowed to proceed unabated by the regulators.“So, we will’t simply maintain industrial customers accountable,” Lewis instructed the viewers. “We’ve got to carry the utility firms accountable, proper?”
Lewis was elected final December. The necessity to maintain utility firms accountable—each for the sake of environmental justice and to fulfill Louisiana’s local weather objectives—drew many individuals to his marketing campaign, by which he managed to push the sometimes under-the-radar submit into the highlight and in the end cruised to a 20-point victory over the 18-year incumbent Lambert Boissiere III.
He was assisted by a wide-ranging motion of activists and grassroots organizations, such because the Better New Orleans Housing Alliance and Dawn New Orleans, who have been moved by his promise to affordably transition to a renewable, resilient grid. He additionally gained the help of a whole bunch of present and previously incarcerated individuals with the native nonprofit VOTE, hopeful that he’d decrease telephone charges in jails and prisons—one other space that falls beneath the scope of the Public Service Fee (PSC).
Lewis did all of this whereas additionally calling for a Inexperienced New Deal in one of many largest oil and gasoline states. His victory has created a possible local weather majority on Louisiana’s Public Service Fee—not fairly a decisive majority, however a practical path for shifting the state’s power grid to renewables, supported by three out of 5 commissioners.
Now, just some months into the job, Lewis is already taking a brand new method to his position of commissioner—by routinely partaking constituents, drawing individuals into the customarily behind-the-scenes means of utility regulation. Together with upcoming city halls and satellite tv for pc places of work throughout his stretch of southeast Louisiana, he reminds individuals on social media of the month-to-month Public Service Fee conferences. He shares recaps of the assembly and explains why he voted the best way he did, inviting questions. He welcomes individuals to DM him on Instagram or Twitter, shoot an e-mail, or simply swing by his workplace to speak. This will sound like what an elected official is meant to do: actively signify their constituents. But it’s uncommon for anybody, in any state, to know the names of their utility regulator, not to mention what they do, or the right way to attain them. Lewis goals to vary that.
Utility regulators throughout america are inclined to function in relative obscurity, whereas regulating the utilities—together with water and electrical energy, which Lewis calls “human rights companies”—that folks must stay.
Whereas it’s too early to evaluate Lewis’s progress on marketing campaign objectives, it’s already clear that he’s spent a number of time partaking constituents, from environmental justice advocates to highschool college students to religion teams to utility associations. He plans to quickly publish a daily log with all his conferences, for transparency. This public-facing method attracts from his background as an organizer, together with his present work directing public affairs on the Louisiana Funds Mission, advocating for low-income residents.
“What I’m actually attempting to do is open the traces of communication,” he instructed me on the finish of February. “I used to be elected as a shopper protector, proper? I can not try this if I’m not deeply invested in my group.” Living proof: He spent this specific Saturday, an unseasonably heat day in February, assembly constituents at back-to-back occasions.
He stated this whereas we weaved by way of a energetic crowd of some thousand individuals gathered in Baton Rouge’s capitol district, not removed from the place the month-to-month PSC conferences are held. Lewis helped sponsor the inaugural 225 Fest, a celebration of the town’s tradition and meals. Meals vehicles dished out colourful snow cones, “ lip smack’n good” lemonade, and wings lathered in sauce. Households lounged beneath sweeping oak bushes. Native musicians carried out on a makeshift stage, honoring the fiftieth anniversary of hip hop. As Lewis handed the stage, the occasion’s emcee gave him a shout-out. “I can’t go anyplace,” he stated, shaking his head, with a buoyant snicker. He was dressed virtually, in a plaid shirt, white sneakers, cuffed denims, and sun shades that didn’t enable him to flee discover.
It rapidly turned clear that Lewis is already broadly identified, at the least in his residence of Baton Rouge, as he greeted a brand new individual each jiffy—buddies who instructed him to come back over, a neighborhood faculty pupil who clasped his hand and stated, “I consider in you,” and the town’s mayor, Sharon Weston Broome, who instructed me that Lewis’s “win actually is consultant of a grassroots effort.”
Lewis met Broome, who wasn’t concerned in his marketing campaign, initially of his political profession in 2009, as a highschool pupil on the legislative youth advisory council, appointed to signify younger voices within the state. He was additionally President Obama’s highschool coordinator for Louisiana, encouraging college students to affix his presidential marketing campaign.
As we meandered by way of the competition, Lewis recalled the election day this previous December. His mom, who raised him by herself in Lake Charles, La., joined him to forged his vote after which later at Holy Floor, a bar owned by a buddy in New Orleans, to look at the election together with his staff. Because the early votes trickled in, he recalled considering, “All proper, one thing could also be within the water right here for us.” When the primary Jefferson Parish votes got here in, he turned to his mother and stated, “I feel we gained this.” His staff realized this too. “Because the margin was getting larger, we have been all identical to, “Oh my God, let’s have enjoyable. We’re profitable.”’
However issues weren’t all the time so clear-cut. After initially endorsing Lewis, Louisiana’s Democratic Get together determined to endorse his opponent, Boissiere, too. Later, it was revealed that utility firms, regulated by the PSC, donated $90,000 to state Democratic leaders, who funneled cash into Boissiere’s marketing campaign. The utilities additionally donated on to Boissiere, which is a part of what Lewis sees as the issue: regulators funded by the utility they regulate, prioritizing the utility’s earnings over individuals’s well being and security.
Lewis didn’t settle for any donations from utilities. His marketing campaign was funded virtually fully by particular person donations, together with a surge of $111,000 from 243 donors throughout the nation, within the span of only a month earlier than the election. A PAC affiliated with the Environmental Protection Fund additionally campaigned for him, spending over $1 million.
Even with this distinctive degree of prominence for a state utility official, Lewis met loads of competition attendees who’ve by no means heard of him, together with a girl recruiting for a nonprofit. She requested Lewis the place he works, and he gave her the prepared response: “I’m the man that you just elect to decrease your power payments.” She nodded approvingly. “Interval. I’m going to want about 10 {dollars} off mine,” she stated.
Lewis sees a part of his job as having conversations like this, alerting individuals to his job’s very existence and demystifying the position of the PSC. When given sufficient time, he’ll go into what he calls the longer “TV preview” of his job, explaining how he ensures that “your energy is sustainable, your energy is dependable, and your energy is inexpensive.”
Aside from utilities, the PSC, which consists of 5 officers holding six-year phrases, additionally regulates water, telecommunication, sewage, gasoline, some pipelines, and intrastate transportation. Lewis sums up his job as defending the human proper to “having contemporary air, clear water, a heat home within the winter and a cool home in the summertime.” Louisiana’s PSC additionally has a serious affect over the local weather as the only authority over state utilities, figuring out how rapidly the grid will undertake renewables, or perpetuate fossil fuels. (It doesn’t regulate petrochemical manufacturing or allowing.)
Different commissioners don’t check with utilities as human rights. It’s a refined however radical reframing of the obligations of a utility commissioner. And it speaks to a broader existential query as utilities all over the place see a surge in climate-related outages, which Lewis raised: “How is the PSC governing within the twenty first century? Are we geared up to manipulate within the twenty first century?” A fast go searching on the nation’s utility failures lately—from the a whole bunch who died when the facility failed throughout a Texas freeze to the 11 who died in New Orleans after Hurricane Ida knocked out energy—would point out that utilities are tragically lagging behind this century’s calls for.
Lewis was among the many greater than 1 million individuals who misplaced energy throughout Hurricane Ida in 2021, staying with a buddy with a backup generator as temperatures rose. Within the aftermath of the storm, utility payments throughout the state spiked, which Entergy attributed to “the rising price of pure gasoline.” This was the ultimate straw that pushed Lewis to run for the PSC. He launched a marketing campaign that struck a chord with many who skilled this tragedy alongside him, and who knew the subsequent grid-threatening storm is across the nook.
After a succession of greetings on the 225 Fest, we sat on a low-slung cement wall (after I requested if it was too low, Lewis assured me, “I’m brief!”) to debate his first steps in his bigger imaginative and prescient of regulating with local weather and racial justice in thoughts. To this point, he has taken an preliminary step towards his marketing campaign promise of reducing telephone payments for inmates, charged as much as $18 per hour in Louisiana by jail telephone firms, regulated by the PSC. In February, in his first order as commissioner, he requested workers to assessment inmate telephone charges and report again in April. “Human interplay to me can also be a proper,” he stated. “I don’t consider we must be making a living off of individuals attempting to work together.”
As a “in the beginning” precedence, Lewis says he plans to ask Louisiana’s Local weather Initiatives Process Pressure to current the state’s 2022 local weather plan to the fee. The state has an extended technique to go to achieve its objective of internet zero greenhouse gasoline emissions, at present drawing simply 4 % of its electrical energy from renewables. “A number of what the governor’s Local weather Motion Plan requires are issues that the PSC has to do,” stated Lewis. For example, the PSC can develop a renewable power portfolio to control emissions reductions. The plan additionally asks the PSC to assessment internet metering choices, a budgeting scheme designed to compensate rooftop photo voltaic and small-scale photo voltaic mills. Lewis plans to deliver each insurance policies to the desk.
“The legislature can’t drive the utility firm to go inexperienced. Solely the PSC can try this,” stated Lewis. “By way of saying, ‘Hey, do I would like 20 % photo voltaic subsequent yr? That’s our authority.”
In different phrases, Louisiana doesn’t have a prayer of assembly its local weather objectives with out the PSC’s deciding, beneath its distinct authority, to behave on them. And whereas the PSC’s shifting the utility grid to renewables is just not assured with Lewis’s win, it’s now extra within the realm of chance than ever earlier than. “I’d say that for the primary time there’s a extra aggressive majority who believes in renewables,” stated Lewis. “You have got three votes the place you’ll be able to theoretically get your self there [to renewables], nevertheless it’s not essentially three stable votes.”
In idea, a type of votes comes from Foster Campbell, the one different Democrat on the fee, who has spoken overtly about the necessity to transfer to renewables, explicitly noting the local weather dangers of fossil gasoline dependency. The opposite comes from Craig Greene, a Republican commissioner in Baton Rouge, who has opened dockets on inexperienced tariffs to “deliver renewable sources into Louisiana” and cheaper electrical energy choices for shoppers. These choices embrace utilities buying off-grid renewables, which Lewis favors as a result of the utilities would assume the monetary danger reasonably than folding the prices into utility payments. He sees this as aligned with a simply transition, shifting to renewables whereas contemplating dangers, like financial prices, for a wider imaginative and prescient of justice.
One other precedence for Lewis is modernizing the grid for local weather change. A 2021 investigation by ProPublica and NPR discovered that Entergy “did not take the required steps to guard its prospects towards outages,” together with earlier than Hurricane Ida’s lethal prolonged energy outage. As Lewis sees it, it wasn’t solely Entergy’s fault. It’s additionally the fault of the corporate’s regulators. Whereas the New Orleans Metropolis Council oversees Entergy New Orleans, the PSC oversees Entergy Louisiana. The latter owned a transmission tower that fell into the Mississippi River throughout Hurricane Ida, knocking out energy in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish. “That’s a cross-jurisdictional line, which suggests it’s Entergy Louisiana,” stated Lewis. “The PSC was instantly answerable for it.”
As we drove alongside the flat banks of the Mississippi River to his subsequent occasion, Lewis famous that utility regulation isn’t all the time partisan. It’s typically danger administration. In Entergy’s case, he thinks that an excessive amount of danger is usually taken on by prospects. “Who coated the price of Ida? Each single ratepayer. Not a single greenback from their shareholders or their shares,” he stated. “I don’t suppose that’s a good danger!” He’s upset on the considered prospects saddled with payments. He questions whether or not the utility firm is chopping prices on grid upkeep to return extra earnings to shareholders—to the purpose of neglecting the transmission tower that collapsed two years in the past.
This tragically outmoded system is what Lewis is up towards now, and positioned to vary if the opposite commissioners are on board. That is the opposite crowd Lewis must win over. “What I feel shall be most essential isn’t just {that a} totally different voice is in that seat, however that he’s in a position to work together with his fellow commissioners to maneuver issues ahead,” stated Logan Atkinson Burke, who directs New Orleans’s Alliance for Reasonably priced Power. Lewis acknowledges that it may not be doable for him to maneuver Louisiana all the best way to one hundred pc renewables, given that he’s just one vote. The way forward for the grid remains to be removed from decided.
However he plans to provide it his finest shot. And it’s the perfect shot Louisiana has had in an extended whereas. “If that is the one time period and the one workplace I maintain in life, I’m going to make it the perfect,” he instructed me. Key to his imaginative and prescient is staying a part of the gang, a utility regulator for the individuals. “It’s not only a stepping stone. It’s life work,” he stated, because the day of numerous greetings drew to an in depth. “I’m linked to my individuals.”