public power

By staff - Trades Union Congress, July 25, 2022

Executive summary

Publicly-owned energy retail companies can deliver fairer bills for households, accelerate the rollout of household retrofits and reduce energy use.

Soaring energy bills are causing untold suffering for low-income households and workers across the UK. The “typical” bill was increased by 54% with Ofgem’s April increase in the energy price cap.[1] Many households have already seen bills go up by over a thousand pounds. Ofgem is expected to increase the electricity and gas price cap again in August by a further 51%, so that average bills pass £3,200.[2]

But allocating the burden of the gas price crisis to domestic households at this scale is not inevitable. Other European countries have demonstrated that it is possible to insulate many or all households from the fallout of the invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s gas politics and global volatility in terms of energy bills. Our analysis shows that this is because governments in those countries have more levers to intervene in energy pricing – and are more prepared to use the levers that they have. Part of this comes down to questions of who owns and controls our energy system, and whom it serves.

There is widespread recognition that the UK’s energy system is broken.

By Ashley Dawson - Truthout, July 20, 2022

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in West Virginia v. EPA dismantles one of the last regulatory tools remaining to cut carbon emissions on a federal scale in the U.S. With the failure of the Democrats to pass significant legislation and the specter of looming defeats in midterm elections, it’s now up to progressive cities and states to take the lead in fighting the climate crisis.

We got close to breaking ground on such an alternative state-level strategy this year in New York. In May, the State Senate passed the Build Public Renewables Act. The bill mandates the state’s New Deal-era public power provider — the New York Power Authority (NYPA) — to generate all of its electricity from clean energy by 2030. It also sets up a process that would allow the New York Power Authority to build and own renewables while shutting down polluting infrastructure. Although it is the largest publicly owned utility in the country, with a track record of providing the most affordable energy in the state, the New York Power Authority cannot legally own or build new utility-scale renewable generation projects at present because the state limits the public power utility to owning only six large utility-scale projects of 25 megawatts or more. This is because renewable energy developers wanted to limit competition from the New York Power Authority. The Build Public Renewables Act would remove this restriction and unleash the New York Power Authority’s game-changing power.

The Build Public Renewables Act had enough votes to pass in the Assembly and move to the governor’s desk to be signed, but Speaker Carl Heastie refused to bring the bill to a vote. Stung by criticism of this undemocratic move and over the tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations he has taken from fossil fuel interests, Speaker Heastie has called a special hearing on the Build Public Renewables Act for late July. The Public Power NY campaign is calling for Heastie and Gov. Kathy Hochul to call a special session so that the Build Public Renewables Act can be passed.

Three years ago, when the Public Power NY campaign began work, things looked a lot more hopeful on the federal level. Presidential hopefuls like Jay Inslee centered his plan for a clean energy economy on community-owned and community-led renewables while Bernie Sanders’s climate plan called for 100 percent public power. Sanders wanted to reach this goal quickly and efficiently by using public funding and infrastructure rather than leaving the transition up to corporate investors, who have failed the public miserably.

By Sean Sweeney - New Labor Forum, July 18, 2022

How can the world end energy poverty in the Global South and simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change? In 2021, 860 million people had no access to electricity. [1] Today, a third of all humanity lacks access to reliable power. Roughly 2.6 billion people heat their homes with polluting fuels and technologies, and using traditional stoves fueled by charcoal, coal, crop waste, dung, kerosene, and wood.[2] The majority of families in the Global South are today able to turn on an electric light—and therefore have “access to electricity” for at least some hours in the day—but for many that is as far as it goes. For other basic needs, dirty and perhaps life-threatening energy continues to be the norm.

The urgency of providing energy to the great numbers of people in the Global South who lack it runs headlong into the necessity to divert climate disaster by reducing worldwide carbon emissions. It is this challenge that sits at he center of current debates on “sustainable development.” For some years, the standard answer from the climate policy world has been the following: the Global South is well positioned to “leapfrog” the phase of centralized energy and jump feet first into the transition to modern renewables, in the same way as mobile phones have proliferated in the developing world without first having to install traditional land-line infrastructure.[3] Whereas large nuclear, coal, and gas-fired power stations and hydroelectric dams take years to build, by comparison wind, solar, and battery technologies are small, easy to install, and, the argument goes, increasingly affordable. Rural communities without electricity can set up stand-alone “micro-grids,” so there is no need for traditional transmission and distribution grids which are expensive and inefficient. The Global South—which refers broadly to Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, and the developing countries in Asia—is blessed with so much sun and wind, there is no reason why energy poverty cannot be consigned to history relatively quickly.[4]

That is the good news. The bad news is that it is not happening, and there are few signs that it will.

By Sean Sweeney - New Labor Forum, July 18, 2022

How can the world end energy poverty in the Global South and simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change? In 2021, 860 million people had no access to electricity. [1] Today, a third of all humanity lacks access to reliable power. Roughly 2.6 billion people heat their homes with polluting fuels and technologies, and using traditional stoves fueled by charcoal, coal, crop waste, dung, kerosene, and wood.2 The majority of families in the Global South are today able to turn on an electric light—and therefore have “access to electricity” for at least some hours in the day—but for many that is as far as it goes. For other basic needs, dirty and perhaps life-threatening energy continues to be the norm.

The urgency of providing energy to the great numbers of people in the Global South who lack it runs headlong into the necessity to divert climate disaster by reducing worldwide carbon emissions. It is this challenge that sits at he center of current debates on “sustainable development.” For some years, the standard answer from the climate policy world has been the following: the Global South is well positioned to “leapfrog” the phase of centralized energy and jump feet first into the transition to modern renewables, in the same way as mobile phones have proliferated in the developing world without first having to install traditional land-line infrastructure.3 Whereas large nuclear, coaland gas-fired power stations and hydroelectric dams take years to build, by comparison wind, solar, and battery technologies are small, easy to install, and, the argument goes, increasingly affordable. Rural communities without electricity can set up stand-alone “micro- grids,” so there is no need for traditional transmission and distribution grids which are expensive and inefficient. The Global South—which refers broadly to Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, and the developing countries in Asia—is blessed with so much sun and wind, there is no reason why energy poverty cannot be consigned to history relatively quickly.4

That is the good news. The bad news is that it is not happening, and there are few signs that it will.

By staff - Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, July 8, 2022

This past June 15th, Australia’s Electricity Market Operator (AEMO) announced the suspension of wholesale electricity spot markets in all regions covered by the country’s National Electricity Market (NEM). The NEM typically provides 80% of Australia’s electricity, mainly in developed coastal areas around the eastern third of the country.

The market suspension came in response to soaring wholesale electricity prices and serious shortages in supply — a combination of factors that, according to AEMO, made it “impossible to continue operating the spot market while ensuring a secure and reliable supply of electricity for consumers” in line with national regulatory requirements.

Key unions in Australia have recognized for years that the NEM does not serve the interests of unions, working people, or the public in general. According to Michael Wright, acting national secretary of the country’s Electrical Trades Union (ETU):

The ETU has been sounding the alarm about the NEM for years. This vindicates our long-held concerns that the market is broken and beyond repair.

The experiment in synthetic markets, trying to deliver essential public services through profit-motivated, tax-avoiding multinational energy corporations, has failed shockingly.

Similarly, Colin Long, Just Transitions Organizer for Australia’s Victorian Trades Hall Council (VTHC), points out that such markets only function when they ensure profits for private owners and investors. As Long states in a background document he has written on the current crisis:

The NEM [like other market-based systems] is designed to deliver electricity in a way that is profitable to generators, mostly privately-owned, not in a way that maximises public or social benefit to Australians.

As Long further explains:

Privatisation was supposed to lead to lower prices for consumers. In fact, the opposite has occurred. Reinstating public ownership would eliminate rentier behaviour by transmission and distribution companies and the need to concede to the profit demands of big overseas investors. It would enable us to plan the energy system transformation, with a clear schedule for closure of fossil fuel generators to give certainty to workers, their communities and electricity grid managers. It would enable us to schedule fossil fuel generation replacement by renewables in a way that guaranteed supply, efficiency and reduced cost – and ensures we meet decarbonisation targets. It would enable us to ensure that workers are guaranteed a just transition to new opportunities and new industries.

Readers who would like a copy of Long’s background document can contact him at clong@vthc.org.au.

Both ETU and VTHC are part of the TUED network, and have played key roles in advancing the project.

By various - Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, April 19, 2022

By staff - Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, April 5, 2022

At its recent 17th National Congress, South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) adopted a bold position in favor of keeping the country’s electrical power utility Eskom fully public.

Attended by roughly 750 delegates, the three-day congress — held in Boksburg, South Africa, from March 30th to April 1st, 2022 — adopted a report titled “Just Transition and the Energy Sector.” The report declares:

In recent years, NUM has worked alongside the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), TUED, AIDC and the Transnational Institute to repel government-led efforts to break up and privatize the national utility Eskom.

By Thomas Hanna, Johanna Bozuwa, and Raj Rao - The Climate and Community Project, April 2022

Publicly and cooperatively owned electric utilities (community utilities) have the potential to demonstrate what an equitable, clean energy system looks like in the United States. They could become powerful “anchor institutions” in their community by grounding their decisions in democratic governance and community partnership, affordable energy and community wealth building, and access to renewable energy.

The United States urgently needs to transition off of fossil fuels and onto clean sources of energy (especially renewable energy) to maintain a livable climate. As of 2020, only around 20% of US electricity generation is from renewable energy sources. Energy utilities – the companies that run our power systems – have enormous control over the scope and scale of the transition, but have often dragged their feet or even fought against clean energy. Not only does their inaction imperil the very future of humanity, but it directly harms families – often Black, Indigenous, low income, or otherwise marginalized – who live in the shadow of toxic power plants. The current US energy system is dirty and expensive. 31% of households in the country have to make the choice between buying groceries or paying their energy bills. In response, communities across the country are beginning to mobilize to demand an energy transition.

We have a powerful tool to accelerate the energy transition in a way that builds community wealth and energy justice in our communities: publicly and cooperatively- owned energy utilities. In this report, we refer to these types of utilities as “community utilities” because they are owned by the local community. Around thirty percent of households in the United States get their energy from community utilities. This is no small part of our energy system. As non-profit utilities without faraway shareholders that are ultimately accountable to the local community, these utilities have the potential to be an example for what an equitable, clean, and democratic energy system could look like. Collective action and organizing to push community utilities toward the intersections of clean/ renewable energy and community development can be more tractable than in corporate utility areas because community utilities’ mandate is to provide a public good, not to maximize profits for shareholders.

Community utilities and cooperatives have a radical history. In the early days of electrification one hundred years ago, residents across the country rose up against profiteering private utilities who provided poor (or nonexistent) service at high prices by creating their own publicly and cooperatively owned utilities. In the state of Nebraska, for instance, they kicked all private utilities out of the state for good. To this day, there are no private utilities providing electricity to Nebraskan homes. This cause was, in turn, taken up by national leaders. For instance, Franklin D. Roosevelt started the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) after rural communities pushed for access to light in their regions. Before that, corporate actors didn’t want to enter rural areas because they didn’t see how they could profit from such unpopulated land. The REA program took electrification from ten to ninety percent in ten years as groups of farmers banded together to start their own electric cooperatives, run on cooperative principles. However, today some community utilities have forgotten their past and are not living up to their potential. Many still rely on fossil fuel energy and some have even pushed back against important climate resiliency approaches like rooftop solar. In some places, democratic governance structures have deteriorated (or been manipulated by powerful interests) and residents don’t even know that they actually own their utility. It is time to reignite the radical history of community utilities to herald the transition to a genuinely democratic, equitable, and clean energy system.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By various - European Trade Union Institute - March 8, 2022

By Cat Hobbs - Red Green Labor, March 1, 2022

As energy bills soar and the climate crisis deepens, there’s only one long-term solution for the energy sector: bringing it into public ownership.

here’s never been a worse time to run our energy system entirely around shareholders. And there’s never been a better time to run energy in public ownership—for people and planet, not profit.As most of us are all too aware, our energy bills will rise by an astonishing £693 in April. Everyone will feel the impact, and for some, it’ll mean a choice between heating and eating. Six million households will be plunged into fuel poverty.

It’s good to see Labour and other voices calling for a one off windfall tax on oil and gas companies of 10% to cut people’s bills. Of course we need this—but the government needs to go much further. The cost of living crisis and the climate crisis won’t be solved without public ownership.

Other countries are already showing us how it can be done: a permanent windfall tax of 56%, driving forward state investment in renewables, running the energy grid in public hands, and cushioning households with a publicly owned supply company. We can copy sensible policies from countries like Norway, Denmark, Germany, and France instead of putting our heads in the sand.

So far, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has ruled out even a one-off windfall tax—but he has plenty of time to change his mind as the full damage of the energy bills hike becomes ever clearer. By 1 April, We Own It is calling on him and Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng to make a public commitment to the following four steps.