For-profit economics, underpinning virtually every privatisation, is the biggest barrier to putting the rallying cries for climate action and system change into practice. The energy economy will continue to expand as long as energy and its transition provide sources of profit. Renewables are still not replacing fossil fuels in the global energy mix. Global carbon emissions from carbon fuels reached a record high in 2023, while current national plans would only deliver half of the required growth in renewable power by 2030.
The culprits are not just the fossil fuel giants. Between 2016 and 2022, some of the world’s biggest ‘green’ multinationals, such as Tesla, Siemens and Iberdrola have made over US$175 billion. This is more than seven times the real financial support that rich countries have provided to poor nations to tackle and adapt to climate change (despite pledging US$100 billion a year in 2009). The underlying dynamic: private and multinational companies often only invest in the transition when public funds secure their profits. Climate and energy policies that lead to profits incentivize vested interests to push up energy production and consumption. This is making it impossible to decarbonise society, and leading to ever more devastating impacts on working class communities – gendered, racialised and otherwise exploited.
How can we turn calls for a feminist energy transition into an attainable solution? As the Energy Democracy Declaration points out: through policies that combine defending and advancing peoples’ right to energy with urgently curbing consumption and adapting to the climate crisis. To address these dimensions jointly, let’s talk about ownership and control. Through an expansive understanding of public ownership, the whole gender-diverse public can collectively decide why, where, for who and with which resources energy is used and produced.
Public ownership constellations, that combine State-owned enterprises with more localised governance, are the policy condition for people to be in charge in a coordinated fashion. This is not an apology for reckless (multi)national oil companies, such as those based in the Gulf, or for (other) State-owned enterprises that are colonizing lands, grabbing critical raw materials, and dispossessing Indigenous and other rural communities in the name of an energy transition. This is the basic recognition that in order to meet peoples’ energy needs, whilst tackling the climate crisis we must struggle for systemic alternatives. And public ownership can be exactly that. Especially when struggles go beyond reclaiming the energy sector from the market and beyond establishing government control. For public energy systems are public in as much as they are democratic. Although this is true for all public services, it is particularly urgent for the energy sector due to all the extractivism pertaining to the whole energy value chain. Trade Unions for Energy Democracy being a key class formation is at the forefront of this fight for public power – with working-class women leading the way to address the many oppressions that the energy transition risks reproducing.
Through ongoing social struggle and deep democratic decision-making we can build up the feminist powers necessary to hold public energy to its values. Based on Costa Rica’s democratic banking model, which sits alongside its public energy sector described below, a key step would be to put gender justice in the legally-binding mission and mandate of every state-owned energy company. On top of this, a variety of energy workers and precarious users can attain decision-making powers through gender-balanced boards. And what if we would establish territory-wide energy observatories towards more accountable governance – mirroring the water observatories in Paris and Catalan city of Terrassa that are expanding democratic control?
As feminists let’s dare to advocate for public energy models that are rooted in justice, solidarity and democracy. This implies sensitivity to context and the need for bridges. Context is vital because there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Although public ownership is fundamentally at odds with the extraction of profits, how workers (women and otherwise), communities and governments co-shape the whole energy value chain is a scaled endeavour aimed to align the concerns of all the rights-holders across a particular territory. This means making sure that national policies and ownership forms are informed by, reflecting and supportive of local realities, but also that communities work together to enable an equitable sharing of wealth, power and resources. More so, as a feminist energy transition will still depend on lots of land to put up solar and wind installations, it is key to involve rural, peasant and Indigenous communities in ways that can reverse centuries-long exploitative extraction. This requires a radical practice of Free, Prior and Informed Consent by making sure that Indigenous and other frontline communities are involved up from project design and planning all the way to implementing and running (renewable) energy infrastructure. Then, meeting the energy needs of surrounding populations is no longer be an after-thought but part of its core mission.
We can also not shy away from the technical complexities of the transition. The energy sector consists of massive infrastructure, spanning from generation sites and high-voltage transmission lines to more regional distribution grids and supply facilities. And since the majority of people need more energy than they can locally produce, we have to figure out the interface between decentralized generation and accountable state-owned electricity utilities. Again, that’s not to excuse the extractivism for which many such utilities are responsible but to argue for transforming these utilities into a democratic undertaking that can uphold the right to sustainable energy whilst following the lead of affected communities. This surely requires equitable and participatory governance with a variety of genders in the driving seat.
Such a feminist energy model may actually enable societies to prioritize essential, social reproductive energy use. Whether it is to keep water, schools and public transport running, or to power and make visible all the care, cooking and cleaning work that is still predominantly done by women. At the same time, public ownership is an encompassing approach that can once and for all curb the endless energy hunger that mainly benefits a rich and exploitative Global North, alongside pockets of elites across the Global South. Why? Because once energy is in public hands, populations themselves would have a way in to democratically design a coordinated phase-out of fossil fuels, in parallel to a massive ramping up of renewables.
Altogether, this will help us to not only wind down fossil fuels but also put a stop to unnecessary if not excessive energy production and use. This way, we can speed up the transition whilst upholding peoples’ right to increasingly renewable energy.
A feminist energy model is not a pipe dream but has been in the making for years, if not decades. In Catalonia, the Alliance against Energy Poverty has been working predominantly with women in energy poverty to achieve legislation in 2015 that bans electricity cut offs. While, in the city of Cadiz, women have been leading on developing a social bonus on residential bills that much better reflects people’s actual energy needs.
Back in Costa Rica, affected communities together with the trade unions have been resisting privatisation and improving public energy by forcing the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE), which is the state-owned utility, to engage in popular dialogue. The success of Costa Rica’s public energy consists of an effective State-municipal–cooperative model in which the utility is responsible for the bulk of all power generation, while working alongside more local public enterprises that serve the urban areas of the country and four big cooperatives that operate in the rural regions. Instead of market competition running the show as is the case in many other countries, collaboration is. And as a result, it is one of the few countries that has decarbonised its electricity mix at affordable rates. The take-away: gender-just energy requires a State that stands up against big business by daring to really share power with communities across the rural-urban spectrum.
For feminist futures, we need to treat energy as a fundamental right on which human and other life depends – rather than as a commodity for profit. And based on many energy transition struggles around the world, building energy democracy through public ownership is our best shot to do this.
This is an updated version of the blog article published by Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Gi-ESCR) on 15 July, 2024.