At the birth of our nation, Alexis de Tocqueville famously visited Pennsylvania and observed an original American trait: communities coming together to solve shared problems. Two hundred years later, this Lightning Plan brings that quintessential idea to the energy space thanks to Community Energy, which will allow communities to jointly benefit from a shared energy source of their choosing.

Power generation is expensive. It’s hard for a single family or a single farmer to invest in or own a methane digester or a solar array. But while these resources can be cost prohibitive for a single family or a single farmer, joint ownership can unlock savings for an entire community. This democratization of energy ownership proposed in the Governor’s Lightning Plan will allow farmers to jointly share a nutrient digester that they could not afford alone and help apartment owners share a rooftop solar installation that they otherwise could not access

The Lightning Plan’s Community Energy bill allows customers the option to choose from a diverse array of energy sources including solar, geothermal, renewable natural gas, or energy storage devices.

This flexibility will save money for communities that choose to share energy resources, while also providing more electricity to the grid, benefiting communities that don’t choose to participate—improving the reliability of our grid while lowering costs for everyone. Please join me in supporting this classically American approach to energy ownership and savings.