Presentation short abstract

Drawing on archival research and interviews, this presentation traces the production of an energy utility debt crisis in the US state of Pennsylvania, contextualizing this crisis in both utility expansionism and the remade utility-customer relationship post-market liberalization.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation considers the production of an energy utility debt crisis in the US state of Pennsylvania, where, as neoliberal crises intensified in the early 2000s, a punitive and enduring utility debt repayment policy ("Chapter 14") was instituted through lobbying efforts led by the city-owned utility Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) with support from the state's private electric and gas utilities. In this presentation, I use archival analysis and interviews to map the development of Chapter 14, establishing how punitive utility debt policies emerged from both PGW's expansionism despite their bounded surface area and the remade utility-customer relationship post-market liberalization. I supplement this archival research with semi-structured interviews with indebted Pennsylvania residents to establish how Chapter 14 is lived and experienced. I argue that to understand and advance claims and campaigns for utility justice - including decommodifying energy and ending shutoffs - utility debt must be understood not as an unfortunate or inevitable symptom of unaffordability and high rates, but as a relation central to the enterprise of supplying electricity and gas for both public and private utilities.