“Market forces” will never prevent climate disaster

Review of The Price is Wrong: why capitalism won’t save the planet, by Brett Christophers (Verso: 2024, 398 pages)

Wind and solar power projects, that for so long needed state backing, can now provide electricity to wholesale markets so cheaply that they will compete fossil fuels out of the park. It’s the beginning of the end for coal and gas. Right? No, completely wrong.

The fallacy that “market forces” can achieve a transition away from fossil fuels is demolished in this highly readable polemic by Brett Christophers.

Solar panels at Dau Tieng Solar Power Complex in Tay Ninh, Vietnam. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

Prices in wholesale electricity markets, on which economists and analysts focus, are not really the point, he argues: profits are. That’s what companies who invest in electricity generation care about, and these can more easily be made with coal and gas.

Christophers also unpicks claims that renewables projects are subsidy-free. Even with renewably-produced electricity increasingly holding its own competitively in wholesale markets, it’s state support that counts: look at China, which is building new renewables faster than the rest of the world put together.

The obsession with wholesale electricity prices, and costs of production – to the exclusion of other economic factors – emerged in the 1980s and 90s as part of the neoliberal zeitgeist, Christophers explains. The damage done by fossil fuels to the natural world, including climate change, was priced at zero; all that needed correcting, ran the dominant discourse, was to include the cost of this “externality” in prices (page 108).

Realising renewable power’s potential means combating capital

By Simon Pirani. Reposted from Spectre journal, with thanks

Download this article as a pdf here

Any socialist vision of the future must deal with global heating and other ways that capital has ruptured humanity’s relationship with the natural world. That means specifying how fossil fuels may be driven out of the economy – and that, in turn, means considering reducing total material throughput, and using the potential of renewable electricity generation.

Against this background, the dramatic shift that has begun in the electricity industry deserves our attention. Economically, oil, gas and coal still dominate energy production – not only to generate electricity, but also in transport and industry, for heat and so on – and hoover up hundreds of billions of dollars a year in state subsidies.

Residential rooftop solar. Creative commons photo

But solar and wind power are starting to expand rapidly, not only in the US and some European countries but also in China. Capital is pouring into these technologies, with more money going to solar than to upstream oil investment globally for the first time in 2022. Engineers’ attention is increasingly focused on how networks can operate when dominated by these variable[1] renewables.

This shift is fraught with dangers; large sections of capital see renewables as an addition to fossil fuels to help drive endless expansion, and the supply chains for the minerals needed are no less exploitative and extractive than those for oil or uranium.

Nevertheless, socialists have good reasons to welcome renewables.

They are secure, very-low-carbon sources of electricity that – in the context of far-reaching economic changes that reduce overall material and energy throughput – can be used to tackle dangerous global heating. Future electricity systems can and should be based on these technologies.

Wind, water, solar and socialism. Part 2: electricity networks

Electricity systems: building blocks of a socialist view. Part 2 of 2. Download both parts here as a PDF

By Simon Pirani

The first part of this article dealt with the supply of energy by renewable electricity generation or by nuclear power. This second part focuses on how electricity networks are changing.

2.1. Is it really technologically possible to base electricity networks on renewables, since they produce electricity intermittently? Could there even be advantages?

There are already big electricity networks based on renewables, and more are on their way. Denmark generates 61% of its electricity from wind and solar, and a further 23% from modern biofuel use. Three of the largest European economies – Germany, the UK and Spain – generate 41%, 40% and 35% of their electricity from wind and solar, respectively, and that share will surely keep rising. Within these countries, variable renewables’ share of electricity generation is much greater in some places: in Scotland, a nation of 5.5 million people, it averaged 60% in 2019-21 and is growing. While variable renewables only contributes 16% of the USA’s electricity, their share in the state of California (which uses more electricity than most countries) is 43%, balanced with another 24% from hydro, 10.5% from nuclear and 22.5% from gas. And then there are nations such as Norway and Paraguay, where hydro power, a non-variable renewable resource, accounts for 88% and 99.5% of electricity generation respectively.[1]

A dispatch centre in Beijing that controls most of China’s ultra-high-voltage lines and monitors renewable electricity inputs. Photo from State Grid Corp of China

The growth of renewables is forcing two big changes to electricity networks: they are becoming less centralised, and bi- or multi-directional. The networks installed in rich countries in the first half of the 20th century, and across much of the global south in the second half, were designed to carry electricity in one direction: mostly from big coal, gas and nuclear power stations, to users. Peak centralisation was in the 1970s; combined heat and power plants, and power stations using combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGT) built in the 1980s and 90s, were smaller. As for wind farms, only the largest, with 100 or more turbines, are comparable in scale to coal-fired plants. Solar power mostly operates at still smaller scales: only about half of the world’s supply is from utility-scale solar farms; the rest is from rooftop panels. In China and Europe, the leading installers in recent years, more solar is being added as rooftop panels than as solar farms.[2]

The physical decentralisation of electricity generation is accompanied by growth of centralised operational coordination. As the number and type of electricity generators increases, networks – i.e. the “grid” of transmission lines, storage facilities and the computers that regulate flows – adapt to manage their inputs. This is part of the “third industrial revolution”, analogous in some respects e.g. with changes made by a committee that uses video conferencing (geographically disparate people using centralised operational technology to work), or a newspaper (geographically disparate reporters, editors and managers who in the last century produced a physical product distributed from one physical location, and now coordinate digitally to produce multiple digital products). 

Wind, water, solar and socialism. Part 1: energy supply

Electricity systems: building blocks of a socialist view. Part 1 of 2. Download both parts here as a PDF

By Simon Pirani

Worldwide, thousands of socialists are active in movements demanding action on climate change; many more participate in co-ops and community energy projects. But our collective efforts to map the transition away from fossil fuels, and how it relates to the transition away from capitalism, have fallen short, in my view. In particular, we need some starting-points for understanding how electricity systems are changing.

In this article[1] – both this first part on energy supply, and a second part on electricity networks – I suggest what these starting-points might be. It aims at clarification, including self-clarification, and I invite responses.

I include some polemical comments on recent would-be socialist arguments, by Matt Huber and Fred Stafford, supporting nuclear power against decentralised renewables.[2]

Workers inspecting a wind farm in Inner Mongolia, China

Here are some assumptions I start with. First, in the transition away from fossil fuels, electricity’s role will expand: not only will it be used to provide heat and light, for cooking and to drive appliances and machinery, but it will have to spread in transport and industry. This expansion is to be welcomed as a method of junking fossil fuels, but unless combined with measures to curb capital’s cycles of overproduction and overconsumption – and thereby cut total throughput of energy through economies – it will fail.[3]

Second, I think renewable electricity generation is in principle better than nuclear or doubtful, borderline technologies such as hydrogen and biofuels,[4] in part because of its potential for underpinning a collectively owned and controlled energy system. However, all good (and all bad!) outcomes will most likely involve a combination of technologies; each has its pros and cons, and socially-determined potentials for good or bad uses.

We need social change – not miracles

Review of No Miracles Needed: how today’s technology can save our climate and clean our air, by Mark Jacobson (Cambridge University Press, 2023). First published in the Ecologist

The main barriers to reaching 100% clean, renewable energy provision the world over “are neither technical nor economic; instead they are social and political”, Mark Jacobson finally declares, more than four-fifths of the way through this book.

Before seeing that, readers should have ploughed through 13 of the 15 chapters, which describe the physical and technical properties of fossil-fuel-dominated energy provision, and contrast to it Jacobson’s proposal for a system powered 100% by wind, water and solar sources (WWS).

Reyajudin Ansari cleans the solar panels on his rooftop in Jharkand, India. Photo: Karishma Mehrotra/ Scroll.in

The proposal is based on computer modelling by Jacobson and his colleagues at Stanford university in California, showing that wind farms, solar panels, hydro, tidal energy and other renewable resources could produce sufficient energy to replace all fossil fuels.

The modelling is controversial: other researchers have questioned the assumptions made, especially about how electricity could be stored and transported.

Some of Jacobson’s arguments about technologies make a refreshing change from most narratives associated with the world’s “green new deals”, though: he argues against using gas, direct air capture, carbon capture, nuclear fuels and biofuels for electricity generation – all beloved of, and hyped by, oil companies, politicians and technomodernists.

But his exclusive, even wooden, focus on technologies is combined with a stubborn lack of attention to the social and political transformations needed for society to dump fossil fuels. Even when he acknowledges social and political obstructions to change, his comments on them are brief and superficial.

Ukraine’s energy system: principles for post-war reconstruction

Ukrainian socialists hosted an on line discussion on “Energy Crisis and Sustainability: lessons of the Russo-Ukrainian war” on 22 October. You can watch a recording on youtube here in English, or here in Ukrainian. The panel of speakers included Ukrainian climate policy researcher Maryna Larina; Leszek Karlik of the Energy Policy Group of Razem, the Polish left party; and Christian Zeller of the University of Salzburg; and me.

The event was part of an on-line conference on Reconstruction and Justice in Post-War Ukraine, hosted by the editors of the socialist journal Spilne (Commons). Recordings of all the sessions are now up on line, and well worth viewing.

Here’s the text of my talk. At the end I have added some comments on the discussion, and some links to further reading. I look forward to the continuation of our discussion. Simon Pirani.

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I have not been to Ukraine since the invasion in February, and I only understand the difficulties people face at second hand. Furthermore, it is difficult for all of us to talk about post-war reconstruction when the war is raging. Every day this means not only deaths and injuries, but also the destruction of civilian infrastructure, including power stations and boiler houses. 

Delegates from the Independent Miners Union of Chervonohrad delivering food, medicines and other aid to front-line communities last week. Photo from the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine twitter feed

This winter, Ukrainians will not only be trying to protect themselves from bombs and bullets, but also trying to stay warm and healthy in the face of disruptions to gas, heat and electricity supplies. [This month, Russian bombing has focused on civilian infrastructure, putting one third of power stations out of action and forcing widespread power cuts as winter temperatures set in.]

But even under these circumstances, discussion has begun about post-war reconstruction, in the first place between the Ukrainian government and European governments at the Lugano conference in July. They are making plans for the long term.

The labour movement, and social movements, need an approach to these issues that takes the side of working people and of society, as opposed to economic or political elites. I am going to suggest four principles that can help develop such an approach.

1. Energy should be supplied mainly from renewable sources.

Society internationally needs an energy transition – that is, a transition to a system without fossil fuels, centred on electricity networks, with the electricity generated from renewable sources such as solar, wind and wave power. In Ukraine, there is also some potential for biofuels made from agricultural waste.

I am sure everyone present knows why this is: because global heating could seriously damage human society, and the chief cause of global heating is the burning of fossil fuels.

For the last 30 years, the world’s most powerful governments have gone to great lengths to delay the energy transition while simultaneously pretending to deal with the problem.

The labour movement and social movements need to advocate a transition that serves the interests of society, not capital.

Two points to make about Ukraine specifically.

a. Coal has historically been central, in the Donbas in particular. Coal use has been falling since 2016, mainly due to Russian military aggression. Now, political forces in the Donbas are discussing a future without coal. For example in the recent open letter by the Mayors of Myrnohrad, Chervonohrad and other towns (here in Ukrainian, here in English). I hope that the labour movement and social movements will engage in this discussion.

b. Gas has also played a key role. The government has sought to reduce dependence on Russian gas, and there have been no direct imports since 2015. However, in Ukraine, as elsewhere, gas companies make the false argument that gas is part of the solution to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions, because it produces energy with fewer emissions than coal. Actually, it’s part of the problem. The energy transition means moving away from gas.

2. It is in society’s interests to cut the flow of energy through technological systems.

To understand this, we should, first, forget the idea of “energy demand”. People do not want “energy”. They want the things that it provides – heat, light, electricity to run computers, the ability to travel from place to place, and so on.