The Jimmy Dore Show – Aug 26, 2025 #TheJimmyDoreShow
Private equity firms like BlackRock and Blackstone are acquiring U.S. electric utilities, raising concerns about monopolistic control and skyrocketing electricity rates. Historical examples, such as California’s 2000–2001 energy crisis, demonstrate how privatization can lead to price gouging, rolling blackouts, and market manipulation for profit. Critics warn that these acquisitions exploit political influence, labor allies, and clean energy groups to advance deals, while leaving consumers with limited recourse and higher costs.
Jimmy and Stef talk about how government-managed utilities historically provide stable service without profit motives, contrasting sharply with private equity-driven models.
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Private Equity Is Coming for Public Utilities
As the AI boom promises soaring electricity demand, private equity giant BlackRock is waging a scorched-earth campaign — with the help of suspiciously timed advocacy from labor allies and ostensible clean-energy groups — to acquire an electric supplier and get a slice of newfound energy profits.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has its tentacles in all facets of American life. The behemoth is buying up grocery brands, dental practices, apartment buildings, and nursing homes. But the opaque industry of private equity has mostly stayed away from electric utilities, the regulated companies that supply power to homes and businesses, because they often don’t yield quick returns.
That’s changing. Last year, the BlackRock subsidiary Global Infrastructure Partners and a Canadian pension fund announced a $6.2 billion deal to buy Minnesota Power, an electric utility that serves more than 100,000 customers in northern Minnesota, including the city of Duluth. The proposal faced fierce opposition from consumer protection groups and environmental watchdogs, who worried the deal would lead to massive rate hikes and hamper efforts to shift the plant to renewables, given private equity’s extractive, short-term business model.
This spring, Blackstone, another private equity firm, announced plans to buy a major electric utility in Texas and New Mexico, if regulators give the green light. The spike in interest is emblematic of how the AI’s massive energy demands, which have boomed alongside data center construction across the country, are drawing Wall Street’s attention to electric utilities it once ignored.
In Minnesota, the final hurdle that BlackRock must clear to secure the deal is approval from the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, the agency that oversees state utilities — the same body that allowed construction of Line 3, the Midwest oil pipeline that drew massive protests, to move forward in 2018.
For more than a year, the commission has borne witness to a tooth-and-nail fight over the proposed BlackRock takeover of Minnesota Power’s publicly traded parent company, Allete. But over the last several weeks, after a state judge issued a strongly worded ruling opposing the deal, the fight has taken on a new character, demonstrating the enormous political influence of private equity and electric utility companies — and how they can wield their power to quell opposition.
In the wake of the judge’s July ruling, several unions in the state swiftly proclaimed their support for the BlackRock deal. In at least one instance, union comments bear the fingerprints of an attorney working for BlackRock, document metadata shows.
What’s more, in recent weeks, a litany of “clean energy” advocacy groups in Minnesota have lined up to support the Wall Street acquisition, prompting skepticism from other energy watchdogs. One of these groups is currently advertising a benefit event sponsored by Minnesota Power and the law firm representing BlackRock in the deal.
If BlackRock is successful in muscling enough support for the takeover, it could prove historic. While it’s not the first instance of an electric utility being acquired by private equity, it’s the first such takeover, watchdogs say, by a global firm of this size.
“We’re viewing this as a precedent-setting case,” said Alissa Jean Schafer, climate director at the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a private equity watchdog group, which opposes the BlackRock takeover. “This is a new thing, a new potential strategy.”
