Renewable energy

What Happened To GB Energy?

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“In a world where vows are worthless.Where making a pledge means nothing. Where promises are made to be broken, it would be nice to see words come back into power.” – Chuck Palahniuk

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One of Common Weal’s most important policy successes has been how we’ve pushed the debate in Scotland and beyond on the issue of publicly owned energy. Energy is absolutely vital to our entire economy regardless of which side of the left-right spectrum you believe that economy should serve (as Prof Steve Keen puts it: “Capital without energy is a sculpture; Labour without energy is a corpse.”) and in the UK we, unlike many other states, have decided to sell off our energy sector to the point that more of our energy is owned by the public sectors of other nations than is owned by our own, never mind the vast swathes owned by private multinationals that are the size of countries.

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Time For Some Tech Optimism

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

 “I’m an optimist because I know what technology can accomplish and I know what people can accomplish.” – Bill Gates

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

Despite my scientific training and engineering background (or perhaps because of them) when talking about the climate emergency, I’ve generally been wary about going down the route of tech-optimism, of believing that there’s a technological solution to the problem just around the corner. There are three broad reasons for this. The first is that risk that the tech fails and leaves us in a worse place than we currently are. Continuing to emit carbon until the day that a tech-priest grants us the blessing of effective carbon capture only works if the blessing actually arrives. If it doesn’t, then we’re left with a larger problem and even less time to fix it. And a strategy like “Net Zero” that fixes part of the problem (like EV cars fixing carbon emissions) but doesn’t address the rest of the problem (overall air quality) isn’t even a solution.

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The Welsh Way Forward – Part 2

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

The conversion of an industry to public ownership is only the first step towards Socialism. It is an all-important step, for without it the conditions of further progress are not established. One important consequence is a shift of power that resolves the conflict between public and private claims. The danger of the State machine being manipulated by private vested interests is thus reduced. – Aneurin Bevan

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

Wales risks creeping ahead of Scotland in progressive policy again, if the Welsh Government adopts proposals put forward by the Institute for Welsh Affairs to radically increase the amount of community owned energy in Wales.

Their new paper, Sharing Power, Spreading Wealth, is a comprehensive map of the state of public energy in Wales and identifies just about every angle that we’ve been campaigning for in Scotland (including mention of the role of Ynni Cymru – the new public energy company set up by the Welsh Government based on our Powering Our Ambitions model of a National Energy Company).

The paper, like much of our energy campaigning, identifies profit extraction from energy resources as a major driver of the current cost of living crisis as well as a major barrier against the development of renewable energy around communities (it’s a bit of a hard sell to see your landscape covered in wind and solar generators knowing that your own energy bills keep going up and none of the profits stay similarly within eyeshot) but also identifies that Wales along, with even more limited devolved funding than Scotland has, is unlikely to be able to nationalise the entire sector.

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