From Dirty Power to Community Power

How fossil fuels captured economies, politics, media — and why locally owned clean energy can help restore public health, democracy, and human potential

The big picture:
For more than a century, coal, oil, and gas powered the modern economy. They built cities, industries, transportation systems, militaries, media empires, and political careers.

They also made some people extraordinarily wealthy while pushing the real costs onto everyone else: polluted air, damaged water, climate instability, public health burdens, fragile energy markets, and communities dependent on systems they do not own or control.

The deeper story is not only about energy.

It is about power.

The core question

How do we move from systems that extract, divide, confuse, and control — to systems that inform, connect, restore, and empower?

The answer:
We stop treating energy as a private extraction machine and redesign it as public-serving, community-owned, affordable, renewable life-support infrastructure.

What happened

Fossil fuels became the foundation of industrial growth because they were dense, transportable, profitable, and deeply useful to governments building national economies.

Governments built roads, ports, pipelines, subsidies, tax rules, military strategies, trade policies, utility systems, and economic forecasts around fossil fuel growth.

Over time, the fossil fuel economy became embedded in public policy. In 2024, the IMF estimated explicit fossil fuel subsidies at $0.73 trillion and implicit subsidies at $6.7 trillion, meaning the public still absorbs major costs that are not fully reflected in market prices. (IMF)

Why it matters

When an economy is built around extraction, the system protects extraction.

The corporations get revenue.
The investors get returns.
The lobbyists get contracts.
The public relations firms get campaigns.
The politicians get donations, jobs, influence, and talking points.
The media companies get advertising and sponsorship dollars.

The public gets the bill.

The media problem

Corporate legacy media did not simply report on the fossil fuel era. Many outlets financially benefited from it through advertising, sponsorships, and branded content.

A 2025 Boston University summary of research on fossil fuel native advertising described these ads as a major challenge because they can look like journalism while presenting oil and gas companies as climate solution leaders.

A related study analyzed 252 fossil fuel-sponsored native ads in leading English-language news outlets from 2014 to 2022, showing how fossil fuel companies used media platforms to present environmental commitment while continuing core business models.

The result:
The public was often asked to trust information systems that were also taking money from the industries shaping the crisis.

That is not public service.

That is conflict of interest disguised as normal business.

What is broken

The old energy system is centralized, extractive, and politically protected.

• It takes fuel from the ground.
• It sends wealth upward.
• It leaves pollution behind.
• It makes communities dependent.
• It turns public policy into private advantage.
• It treats clean energy as a threat when clean energy disrupts the old revenue model.

The Carbon Majors database traced 34.7 gigatons of CO2e in 2024 to 166 oil, gas, coal, and cement producers, with just 32 companies linked to more than half of global fossil fuel and cement CO2 emissions that year.

This is not only about individual behavior.

This is a systems design failure.

What needs repair

• We need to repair the relationship between energy, democracy, health, and local wealth.
• Energy should not be something done to communities.
• Energy should be something communities help own, shape, produce, distribute, conserve, and benefit from.

That means moving from dirty, centralized power to locally owned and community-accountable clean energy systems: solar, wind, geothermal, storage, microgrids, weatherization, efficiency, demand response, public buildings as resilience hubs, and energy cooperatives.

What needs a new system

Some parts of the fossil fuel system cannot be reformed. They must be replaced.

A healthier energy system would be:

• Locally owned where possible.
• Renewable by design.
• Affordable by purpose.
• Transparent in pricing.
• Accountable to communities.
• Designed for resilience.
• Connected to public health.
• Powered by local jobs.
• Protected from corruption and special-interest capture.

Community energy is not fantasy. IRENA’s work on community energy describes community ownership and participation as a way to support more inclusive renewable energy growth while keeping more benefits local.

What good looks like

• A community-owned clean energy system lowers bills instead of locking families into fossil fuel price shocks.
• It powers schools, clinics, shelters, homes, farms, small businesses, and community centers.
• It creates local jobs in installation, maintenance, construction, weatherization, storage, engineering, education, and repair.
• It keeps more money circulating locally.
• It reduces asthma, pollution, heat stress, and health costs.
• It gives people a visible stake in the future.
• It turns energy from something people pay for into something people participate in.

Community solar is one practical pathway. The U.S. Department of Energy describes community solar as a model that can expand solar access beyond rooftop owners, including through solar-plus-storage, microgrids, and distributed clean energy approaches serving low-income communities. 

Who gets disrupted

• A real clean energy democracy will disrupt the dirty energy economy.
• It will disrupt corporations that profit from continued fossil fuel dependence.
• It will disrupt public relations firms that greenwash pollution.
• It will disrupt lobbyists paid to delay change.
• It will disrupt politicians who protect the old model.
• It will disrupt media outlets that depend on fossil fuel sponsorship while claiming to serve the public.
• It will disrupt utility structures that resist local generation because local power threatens centralized control.
• That disruption is not a side effect.
• It is the point.

What people can do now

• Start where you are.
• Map the energy burden in your community. Find out who faces the highest bills, the most outages, the worst pollution, and the least access to clean energy.
• Identify public buildings that can become clean energy hubs: schools, libraries, clinics, fire stations, community centers, shelters, houses of worship, and food distribution sites.
• Organize a local energy team with residents, electricians, builders, teachers, small businesses, health workers, planners, students, and community media makers.

Ask your city, county, school district, housing authority, or utility:

• Who owns our energy?
• Where does the money go?
• What fossil fuel contracts are we locked into?
• What rooftops, parking lots, brownfields, and public lands can produce clean power?
• What would it take to create community solar, storage, microgrids, or an energy cooperative?
• Who is being left out of rebates, incentives, and financing?
• Demand public-interest procurement. Public money should support clean energy that lowers bills, builds local jobs, protects health, and strengthens resilience — not vendor deals that reproduce dependency.
• Tell the story. Show people the real cost of dirty power and the real possibility of community power.

The better questions

• Before supporting any energy project, ask:
• Does this reduce pollution?
• Does this lower bills?
• Does this build local ownership?
• Does this create local jobs?
• Does this improve public health?
• Does this strengthen resilience during emergencies?
• Does this reduce dependence on fossil fuels?
• Does this serve the community or extract from it?
• Does this move us closer to our healthier human potential?

The Mobilized view

Mobilized News exists because a well-informed public is the most powerful and valuable natural resource for all.

But information alone is not enough.

• People need context.
• Context creates understanding.
• Understanding creates trust.
• Trust creates cooperation.
• Cooperation creates new systems.

The fossil fuel era trained people to believe that power comes from somewhere else.

The community energy era can show that power can be created, owned, shared, and governed closer to home.

The bottom line

• Dirty energy made some people rich.
• Community energy can make people healthier, freer, more resilient, and more connected.
• The old system extracted from the Earth and the public.
• The new system must restore both.
• Less fossil fuel dependence. More community ownership.
• Less corruption. More accountability.
• Less greenwashing. More public truth.
• Less extraction. More restoration.

The future of energy is not only renewable.

It must be democratic, affordable, local, transparent, and designed to serve life.

That work begins where we are now.