Designed for lawmakers and advocates, these toolkits include resources and examples of how to use local government to promote local clean energy and hold monopoly utilities accountable.

In 2022, Minnesota’s Public Utility Commission approved an Integrated Resource Plan requiring Xcel to model distributed ...

In the late 1800’s there were 4,000 breweries. By the 1970’s, just 40 companies operated 89 breweries. ILSR’s Ron Knox explains how the beer industry is now dominated by just a few large conglomerates ...

Chain dollar stores are inundating America’s communities. In both small towns and urban neighborhoods, they are edging out locally owned businesses, freezing out entrepreneurs, and shifting profits ...

Mama Shu’s journey began with a profound commitment: healing her community. Despite the challenges faced by her hometown of Highland Park, Mama Shu felt a deep connection to the area. Determined to ...

Randy Wilson knew you had to start somewhere. Knocking on doors and hanging around retail store parking lots, he and volunteers from the citizen group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth collected ...

One way to build local power is to catalyze change directly in your community. Another, equally important method is to catalyze the catalysts. To really make change and build sustainable local ...

You’d think a company with as many resources, employees, and facilities as AT&T or Comcast would have good customer service. Surely, with all the billions of dollars flowing through these businesses, ...

At the end of last year, we published an in-depth report about how dollar store chains are targeting struggling city neighborhoods and small towns. We found growing evidence that the growth of dollar ...

The steep and rapidly growing fees Amazon extracts from the businesses that have little choice but to rely on its site to reach customers are a striking measure of its monopoly power. These exorbitant ...

Most of the economies of scale in producing wind electricity are from scaling up from one to two turbines to about ten turbines. Local delivery of distributed wind can compete with avoided costs at ...

Click on image to download the fact sheet. As lawmakers have grown increasingly serious about addressing Amazon’s harms, Amazon has sought to portray itself as beneficial to independent small ...