Over 42,000 Central Hudson customers lost power Friday morning from the aftermath of an ice storm. Four days later, despite heroic efforts by workers under difficult circumstances, thousands are still without power. Given that severe weather events will be frequent under climate change, the resiliency of for-profit corporate utilities, such as Central Hudson, and their notorious record for cutting corners on maintenance must be examined.

Investor-owned utilities like Central Hudson have a singular goal: to make profits. The service they provide is a means to reaching that goal. Fortis, the Canadian billion-dollar corporation that owns Central Hudson, owns at least 10 electric and gas operations with $57 billion in assets. Fortis has reported increases in common share dividend payment for 48 consecutive years, and it pledges to grow dividends annually by 6 percent on average through 2025. Among the entities owned by Fortis, Central Hudson has the highest Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) at 7.3 percent. As of last spring, Central Hudson was looking to raise rates for electricity by 8.5 percent and for gas by 12 percent over a five-year period. In short, Central Hudson and its parent company have been making a lot of money, and plan on making more money, even as power lines go down and customers receive inflated bills.

Privately-owned utilities are known to neglect their infrastructure because maintenance is unprofitable work. The conditions under which utilities can increase the rates they charge customers create a perverse incentive to build unnecessary new infrastructure instead. Meanwhile, 70 percent of transmission lines and transformers in the U.S. are over 25 years old and overdue for upgrades. Neglect by PG&E caused devastating wildfires in California, neglect caused the massive storm blackouts in Texas, and neglect caused the prolonged outage in Ulster County.

As a climate organizer, I believe that just as the public should own the water system, it should also own the energy system. I believe in Public Power.

Public power utilities already exist in the U.S. Households that get public power pay 12 percent less on average compared to those who get it from privately-owned utilities. Exempting severe weather events, public power customers experience outages that last 62 minutes a year on average compared to private utilities’ 150 minutes per year.

Decisions that maximize profits are never decisions that protect people. Public services, on the other hand, exist solely to provide a service. A public power utility can spend resources on maintenance because it does not need to consider the impact on quarterly profits. Instead, any revenues generated by public entities can be reinvested into public goods.

That’s why the signature bill of my climate platform is the NY Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA). New York has the country’s largest energy provider, New York Power Authority (NYPA), but it is limited by law to own up to only six large-scale energy plants. This bill removes the limit, letting NYPA lead our renewable buildout so that we can meet our goal of 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2040.

However, the fight against climate change can’t be only about renewables, it must also be about justice. BPRA would empower community input and ensure we are building renewable projects responsibly, unlike the ways in which for-profit companies currently do. It would also create thousands of good quality and sustainable green jobs, many of them in the Hudson Valley, many of them union, and revitalize our economy by injecting billions of dollars into our communities, especially those at the front line of environmental injustice.

Last week, at the environmental budget hearing, we were told that we are on track to meet our clean energy goals through private companies, but we were also told that only four out of 63 privately-owned renewable projects have made it through the siting process. Meanwhile, we are halfway to our 2015 state renewable targets as solar and wind combined remain stuck at 4-6 percent of the energy we produce. It is clear that private companies are suited neither for energy generation nor for energy distribution. We must address both with Public Power.

That is why when I am elected I will fight for a publicly-owned, democratically-controlled, and 100 percent renewable energy system for all New Yorkers. Something as vital as our energy system should be for and by the people, not be monopolized by for-profit corporations. After this weekend, many in Ulster County are likely to agree.

Sarahana Shrestha of Esopus, a first-generation immigrant and a climate organizer, is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the 103rd Assembly District.