This report demonstrates that reducing energy demand and switching the entire electricity infrastructure to renewables is not a profitable endeavour. Rather, it entails costly and comprehensive change that will not succeed without public planning, public finance and public ownership. The transition requires governments to be well equipped and held accountable by a myriad of social movements and populations at large to implement policies in the public interest. Instead of leaving the energy system to the market and corporations, governments should ensure that energy workers and users can participate at every level of the sector to ensure that just, democratic and sustainable public energy systems are built.
We hope these mythbusters contribute to an increasingly powerful and interconnected labour and environmental justice movement that, collectively, can force governments to dismantle the for-profit market model and realise energy transitions by and for the public.
Finally, this publication is part of an open political process in which trade unions, scholar activists and frontline communities have developed an Energy Democracy Movement Declaration. This seeks to work towards taking energy back from the market and moving towards public ownership and democratic management, with popular participation, human rights and equality at its heart.