The possibility of the city and county of Santa Fe owning an independent municipal power utility is under study and gathering support.

Electricity for Santa Fe and much of the county is now provided by investor-owned Public Service Co. of New Mexico. The majority of the power comes from coal-fired power plants in northwestern New Mexico.

More than 1,500 people have signed a petition asking the Santa Fe City Council to study the idea of a renewable-energy municipal power utility owned by the public.

Faren Dancer, a local builder and founder of an environmental organization called Unicopia, launched the petition Jan. 12. He's hoping for well over 2,000 signatures before he takes the petition to the governing bodies.

"I figured the city and county won't go for this unless there's a huge groundswell of public support," Dancer said.

Dancer has been hosting a series of mini sustainability summits at the house he built in Santa Fe, a net-zero energy building. On Saturday, Dancer held another meeting to hear from Santa Fe city and county energy experts, as well as elected officials, on his "muni-utility" idea.

"The track we're taking is not about pushing against the powers that be as to be a purely solution-oriented group," he said.

Santa Fe County Commissioner Kathy Holian attended Saturday's conference. She said later that the joint city and county Regional Planning Authority allocated $25,000 for the county to study options for an independent municipal power utility.

She said the funds were awarded to the nonprofit New Energy Economy, which has leveraged other money and issued a request for proposals. Holian said she hopes a feasibility study will be completed by July.

"We're looking at various scenarios," Holian said. "I think it is important to go forward."

She said the study will need to look at what the existing PNM-controlled grid in Santa Fe is worth and what customer rates might look like if the city and county launched a joint power utility. "Our goal would be to at least stabilize rates [with a municipal grid]," Holian said.

She said the study also needs to look at what a locally owned public utility would mean for the Santa Fe economy. Holian thinks it could mean more local jobs and keeping the revenues generated by power sales closer to home.

A publicly owned utility isn't driven by a profit motive like an investor-owned or privately-held utility, she said. It also would fulfill sustainability plans approved by the City Council and County Commission, she said.

The city of Santa Fe already owns its water utility, which it purchased from PNM, and jointly operates a river diversion project with the county.

Other cities have already tried municipal-owned utilities.

Since 1968, Los Alamos County's Department of Public Utilities has managed electricity, gas, water and waste for Los Alamos and White Rock residents. Public Service Co. of New Mexico owns the power lines and Los Alamos leases space. But the county is in better control of its own rates and can develop alternate energy sources. In the 1980s, Los Alamos bought interest in the San Juan Electric Generation Plant for building hydroelectric power plants at the El Vado and Abiquiú reservoirs.

In the last few years, the publicly owned utility has worked with Los Alamos National Laboratory to develop hydroelectric and utility-scale solar-power projects.

Austin Energy in Austin, Texas, a community-owned power company since 1976, now serves more than 400,000 household and business customers, serving more than a million people. The profits are returned to the community to fund projects such as fire stations and libraries. According to its website, the utility company had the first "green building" program and has some of the top energy-efficiency programs in the nation. Energy sources include coal, nuclear, natural gas, solar and wind.

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.