Rapidly transitioning to a zero carbon future requires a publicly owned energy system centred on democratisation and decentralisation.
Offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea, Bernd W’stneck/DPA/PA Images
Whether it’s 11 years or 18 months, we haven’t got long to make the big, bold changes needed to prevent global climate catastrophe.
If we’re going to have a chance of preventing widespread disaster, we can’t keep waiting for the private sector to deliver our clean, green energy future. Public ownership is the way to transition quickly to zero carbon, hand in hand with workers, citizens and communities.
Across the world, people are taking energy back
The Transnational Institute (TNI) has tracked cities around the world that are taking control of their local energy supply, sometimes backed by popular votes
The city of Munich in Germany is particularly inspiring. It has committed itself to developing an electricity supply that is 100% municipal and 100% from renewable energy. The council did this because they were tired of waiting for the private companies to make the necessary investments, and they were confident that the city council could do the job better – putting sustainability before profit. By 2025, the utility company aims to produce so much green energy that the entire demand of the city can be met.
What would public ownership mean in practice?
77% of us believe energy should be in public ownership. Our new report ‘When We Own It: A model for public ownership in the 21st century’ aims to outline what energy democracy means in practice.
We propose that you would have easy access to data and information, and could give your feedback and ideas online, on the phone or in a shopfront on every high street. You’d be a member of ‘Participate: Energy’ – the new, democratically accountable organisation representing energy users. Energy reps will sit on supervisory boards, alongside trade union reps and civil society reps – like environmental NGOs, fuel poverty groups, renters’ unions and local community groups.
Public planning processes would include large scale meetings every five years, annual reporting back, open board meetings and citizens assemblies for difficult or controversial issues.
We need local, regional and national conversations about our energy future. Andrew Cumbers explains how in Norway, the publicly owned company Statoil was set up in 1972 in order to control the use of oil in the interests of the ‘whole of society.’ Although Norway now needs to transition beyond oil, we can still learn from this example. The company was subject to a lot of democratic scrutiny and debate in parliament and a new, independent ‘Petroleum Directorate’ was created, with responsibility for regulating and controlling North Sea oil and gas resources, which led to better health and safety for workers.
The conversations should involve organisations and groups who understand the challenges in the energy supply chain. Controversial, extremely damaging extraction techniques like fracking should be outlawed altogether. Asad Rehman has argued the Green New Deal will be dirtier than we think as the technology often depends on extracting rare minerals from countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chile.
We need the right to vote against any proposals to privatise or outsource energy. In 2013 the citizens of Hamburg voted to reverse the privatisation of the city’s electricity, gas and heating networks. MORE
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