A group in Santa Fe convened last Friday as part of a grassroots effort to provide input to the Democratic party platform. The meeting was organized by local volunteers for Barack Obama as part of a nationwide initiative by the Obama campaign to solicit planks for the party’s Energy and Environment platform. Among the recommendations sent to democratic party leaders from Santa Fe was a call to make the U.S electric power grid public, and then use it as the centerpiece of an economic revival plan.

The group also called for a feed-in tariff law at the federal level to reward independent producers of electricity from renewable sources, and it rejected the so-called “revenue decoupling” programs that guarantee utility revenue streams even as customers reduce their purchases of electricity.

Under a law passed this year, electricity customers in New Mexico began paying a surcharge on their monthly electric bills to make up for declining revenues resulting from energy efficiency.

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