In January 2021, Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney made a big announcement: the city was committing to carbon neutrality by 2050. In an apparent sign of the seriousness of the effort, the city released a draft of its Philadelphia Climate Action Playbook, announced the hiring of its first Chief Resilience Officer, and established the city’s first Environmental Justice Commission. While many activists maintain that Kenney’s target was not ambitious enough, it was nonetheless a historic day for Philadelphia — and a step in the right direction for the climate justice movement.

But as time would tell, it wasn’t the whole story of the city’s moves on climate. While Kenney was announcing the city’s commitment to carbon neutrality, leaders at Philadelphia’s municipally owned gas utility Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) were working behind the scenes to undermine that goal. Private emails showed that PGW executives were trying to strengthen a piece of Pennsylvania state legislation spearheaded by gas industry lobbyists — and resoundingly opposed by the Philadelphia City Council — called Senate Bill 275, which would stop municipalities from transitioning away from fossil fuels. While PGW was publicly “neutral” on the bill, the emails told a different tale.

The revelation was a sobering reminder of the limits of public utility ownership at a time when municipalization of energy utilities is a top priority for socialists around the country. From New York to Providence to Chicago, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) chapters have recently waged campaigns to bring the for-profit companies that provide their energy under public control. State or city-owned utilities, the logic goes, are more likely to treat energy as a public good, and prioritize people and planet over profits.