MGE of the future
Since January 2015, my colleagues at Justice and Sustainability Associates and I have been supporting Madison Gas and Electric's ambitions to become a "Utility of the Future" (“MGE Snubs the Commnity,” 2/11/2016). Here are some of the steps we have taken since being engaged to develop an ongoing partnership with community members as they develop their future energy plans.
1. In January 2015, JSA, not MGE, began an engagement process originally designed to be implemented from January 2015 to June 2016. Our original design had four phases: construct an information architecture, conduct facilitated small group discussions, hold town meetings and launch a Community Energy Partnership (CEP) — a name JSA proposed.
2. Design itself is a process. Thus elements of our initial design have changed over the past 14 months. We originally proposed town meetings and, later, a single town meeting to occur around November 2015. The date of the workshop will be announced soon.
We learned that "town meetings" in Madison (100 people in a line, each with three minutes on the mic to say whatever they want) meant something opposite to what we intended. So we have opted for a single "workshop" in 2016. For us, the operative focus is on the "work" of a facilitated deliberative discussion between people intentionally invited because they have diverse views about and interests in MGE's success. I can say, confidently, that the workshop's dates will be announced soon.
Requests for more small group discussions led us to ending that phase later than we originally planned and too close to the holiday season.
MGE communicated their decision not to submit a major new rate request in late 2015 so it would be informed by our engagement process. So, we stepped back to be as smart as we could be about planning the workshop.
3. Beginning in fall 2015, I began meeting informally with leaders of stakeholder groups and MGE executives to assess their readiness for facilitated dialogues to commence early in 2016. Last month, those face-to-face dialogues began and are expected to continue and grow. JSA's expectation is that the dialogues will continue up to and after the aforementioned workshop.
4. It is JSA's view that a nascent “Community Energy Partnership” for Madison/Dane County is already in development as a result of the dialogues now underway. I expect details about structure, scope, schedule, etc. to be advanced by the dialogues and by the workshop.
JSA published a report on the small group discussions it designed and conducted in 2015. The report is available on JSA's website: jsallc.com/mge/community-energy-conversations.
JSA's commitment as impartials continues to be helping build on MGE's 2030 Community Energy Framework. I view the framework as a flexible structure that can be continually informed by stakeholder and public input. We invite everyone to help MGE produce a 2030 Community Energy Plan that can be implemented in partnership over the next 15 years with its customers, stakeholders and shareholders.
Don Edwards, Chief executive officer and principal, Justice and Sustainability Associates, Washington, D.C. (via email)
My wife and I are shareholders in Madison Gas and Electric. While we are interested in the continuing profitability of the company, we are also concerned about the apparent lack of serious commitment to the concerns of the public regarding environmental responsibility, equitable rates and other issues relevant to citizens served by its energy company.
We recently returned from a trip to New England. In Vermont we were impressed by the number of small solar energy installations in or near virtually every town and village, placed there by Green Mountain Power, which is actively engaged in freeing the state from dependence on fossil fuels.
Adolf Gundersen’s piece in Isthmus alerts us to an impression we have formed in recent months that MGE, while it speaks of citizen involvement, concentrates its efforts on speaking to citizens, rather than listening to them in an honest and open-minded exchange of views.
We believe that the future of MGE and the value of our investment depends on such an exchange, the sooner the better.
Alan and Katie Green, Plain, Wis. (via email)
Corrections
In last week’s story on the Burrito Box, the address for Capital Centre Market was incorrect; it should have been 111 N. Broom St. In the story on Bricks & Minifigs, the pricing for minifigures from the bulk bin should have been $4, not $8.
Odds bodkins!
I’ve not seen the film, but I can pretty much guarantee that The Witch, as described by Marc Savlov (2/18/2016), is not spoken in Old English, a grouping of Germanic languages spoken in the south and east of Britain from roughly the fifth through the 11th centuries that are entirely unintelligible to Modern English speakers. Savlov probably means Shakespearean, Elizabethan or Early Modern English, which would closely resemble the language spoken in the 17th-century English colonies.
Jonathan M. Bartnik (via email)