
Electric Life
Utility Regulation and the Fight for Energy Democracy
Nikki Luke(Author)
MIT Press
Will be published approx. on 17. March 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
264 pages
978-0-262-05197-2 (ISBN)
Description
How workers and customers engage utility regulation to act on climate change, energy affordability, and environmental, racial, and economic injustice.
Electric Life traces the intertwined history of Atlanta’s racialized uneven development and growing electricity use to show how electricity infrastructure shapes everyday life. Nikki Luke looks at how quotidian relationships with the electric utility catalyze intersectional organizing for energy democracy. She also investigates the legal and material construction of the investor-owned utility as a regulated monopoly and the state public service commission that regulates it.
Contemporary organizing for energy democracy questions how the utility and the systems that govern it need to change to ensure energy affordability, provide remedy and reparation for enduring environmental and energy injustice, and build a just and equitable energy transition from fossil fuels. Bridging urban, environmental, and labor studies, the author demonstrates how these demands to change the utility emerge from the tradition of civil rights, labor, and environmental organizing for fair treatment from the utility, affordable energy, protection from pollution, and good jobs.
Electric Life traces the intertwined history of Atlanta’s racialized uneven development and growing electricity use to show how electricity infrastructure shapes everyday life. Nikki Luke looks at how quotidian relationships with the electric utility catalyze intersectional organizing for energy democracy. She also investigates the legal and material construction of the investor-owned utility as a regulated monopoly and the state public service commission that regulates it.
Contemporary organizing for energy democracy questions how the utility and the systems that govern it need to change to ensure energy affordability, provide remedy and reparation for enduring environmental and energy injustice, and build a just and equitable energy transition from fossil fuels. Bridging urban, environmental, and labor studies, the author demonstrates how these demands to change the utility emerge from the tradition of civil rights, labor, and environmental organizing for fair treatment from the utility, affordable energy, protection from pollution, and good jobs.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge (Massachusetts)
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Illustrations
10
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Weight
369 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-262-05197-2 (9780262051972)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
03/2026
MIT Press
€39.49
Available for download
Person
Nikki Luke is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Tennessee.
Content
Introduction: The Value of Electric Life
Chapter 1: Lighting the Atlanta Way
Chapter 2: Paying for Electric Life
Chapter 3: The Slow-Violence of Fossil-Fueled Progress
Chapter 4: Organizing Electricity On and Off the Job
Chapter 5: The Work of Finding Work
Conclusion: Stealing Back Time
Endnotes
Chapter 1: Lighting the Atlanta Way
Chapter 2: Paying for Electric Life
Chapter 3: The Slow-Violence of Fossil-Fueled Progress
Chapter 4: Organizing Electricity On and Off the Job
Chapter 5: The Work of Finding Work
Conclusion: Stealing Back Time
Endnotes