16 LED HURRICANE LANTERN GENERATOR

Reclaim Our Power rallies outside of PG&E’s San Francisco headquarters in December 2019. Additionally, instead of completing long-overdue infrastructure repair to minimize wildfires, PG&E has sought to limit its liability for future fires by instituting rolling blackouts during wildfire season, leaving millions throughout the state without power, with little advance planning to protect communities dependent on power to live. The company has recouped its losses from these fires by hiking up costs for ratepayers, who already pay among the highest rates in the country. Year after year, massive megafires-the Dixie, Tubbs, Zogg, and Mosquito fires, each in the top 10 fires in California history-have either been caused by PG&E, or PG&E has been at the center of investigations and settlements surrounding the fires. The utility has admitted some guilt, some investigations are ongoing, there have been settlements without admission of guilt, and the clock is still ticking on some court proceedings. In 2018, PG&E’s crumbling electrical grid started a fire that ravaged Paradise, also in California, killing 85 people and burning 14,000 homes. In 2010, PG&E malfeasance caused an explosion in San Bruno, California, blowing a hole in a major city and killing eight people. The consequences have been particularly devastating for Indigenous, Black and Brown, disabled, elderly, poor, working class, and rural communities. This has resulted in catastrophic wildfires, deadly explosions, power shutoffs for millions of people, escalating rates, expansion of dirty energy projects, and vehement opposition to the increasingly popular move toward community-controlled, renewable energy. As a profit-seeking private entity whose shareholders are guaranteed a specific rate of return on investment, PG&E often forgoes spending on essential measures to protect human and ecosystem health. It serves some 16 million people across 70,000 square miles in Central and Northern California. The nation’s largest utility, PG&E, is investor owned. For Shelterwood and others, one way to do that is to build community-governed solar microgrids. They are among a growing number of organizations and localities trying to wrest control of their energy futures away from behemoth, dirty, and dangerous energy utilities like PG&E, and to put decisions about energy production, distribution, and use in the hands of the most impacted communities. Shelterwood Collective is an Indigenous-, Black-, and queer-led collective of land protectors and cultural strategists stewarding 900 acres of forest in Northern California.

16 LED HURRICANE LANTERN GENERATOR

Nikola Alexandre fires up a generator at Shelterwood, a QTPOC land stewardship project in Cazadero, CA. We’ll shift from a community that is vulnerable to one that is more independent and sovereign in how our energy is produced and used.” “Our hope is that as we build up this microgrid we won’t be as dependent on Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E)-both in the summer when they cut off power because of wildfires and in the winter when the trees come down on the power lines. The damages are only going to get worse, but our autonomy and ability to respond to it is only going to get better,” Alexandre says. “We joked that this was the worst-best storm of our lives. “We ran the generator two to three hours a day to check in with the outside world, let people know we were OK.” He and others at Shelterwood Collective were without power for two weeks in early 2023 when massive storms hit California. “Our connection to the outside world is satellite internet-so no power, no internet,” Alexandre says. The generator sputters briefly then steadily starts to hum. On a cold winter morning deep in the woods of Cazadero, California, Nikola Alexandre adds gasoline to a red Predator 2000 generator, flips on the engine’s switch, and pulls the recoil cord.

16 led hurricane lantern