The complex contemporary economic processes that enable the material and symbolic sustenance of people depend on energy. It is a resource of primary necessity and this makes it strongly linked to power and conflict. Access to and control over energy has historically been a fundamental political issue.
The development of our fossil economies has led to the preponderance of energy ownership schemes (public and private) consistent with the liberal vision of ownership (exclusive and exclusionary) and with the dynamics of dispossession inherent to capitalism. But the energy transition towards renewables contributes to experimenting with alternative forms to the traditional ones: public (state) and private ownership of energy. This is due to the fact that in this impasse, renewable electricity becomes relevant, allowing the involvement of a wide diversity of actors: from large financial groups to SMEs of different legal natures (including social and solidarity economy enterprises), public bodies at local or regional level, and the citizenry as a whole.
However, the fact that energy is such an absolutely strategic element for a country means that it is highly intervened by States and by supra-state bodies such as the European Union, fundamentally to guarantee security of supply in a framework of international economic competitiveness and a global energy and climate crisis. Intervention mainly involves a very high degree of regulation and ownership in the global energy sector, either through the acquisition of assets or through state-owned enterprises, especially in the electricity sector.
According to the report State-Owned Enterprises and the Low-Carbon Transition published by the OECD (2018), 31 of the 51 largest electricity utilities in the world have a majority public shareholding, most of them Chinese and Russian. In Europe, the so-called ‘neoliberal consensus’ of the last quarter of the 20th century led to a reduction in the weight of the state in the electricity business and, as a result, only the Swedish Vattenfall, which is fully public, the French EDF (85% owned by the French state) and, in second place, the French ENGIE and the Italian ENEL, with a minority shareholding by their states (33% and 24%, respectively), stand out.
On the other hand, it is also true that the very nature of energy makes public intervention indispensable. If we focus on electricity, it should be stressed that, unlike fossil fuels, once it has been generated, it circulates through the networks with little or no possibility of being stored. This key detail conditions its management because it requires precise coordination to match supply and demand at all times. To do so, it is also necessary to take into account the constraints imposed by the different generation technologies or processes: from their capacity to regulate production (for example, a nuclear power plant cannot be shut down suddenly or the production of a wind turbine varies depending on the wind blowing) to their geographical location (the distance between the point of generation and the point of use). Nor should we forget the management of international grid connectivity with neighbouring countries.
In short, these issues cannot be ignored when discussing possible – and desirable – models of energy ownership. Energy is a resource that is difficult to compare to any other, and public non-intervention is inexcusable in order to adapt to its peculiarities.
Energy ownership in Spain
Before continuing, it should be noted that, depending on how one looks at it, linking ownership and energy does not only mean addressing the question of the possession of legally sealed titles in the energy sector. From a republican perspective, to speak of property is to speak of access to the set of material and immaterial resources considered relevant – of a nature and quantity contingent on each spatio-temporal context – to guarantee people a dignified livelihood. The social function of property has to do with enabling people to live a life of socio-economic independence. It is also assumed that the only interdependencies with others are those that are free from arbitrary interference.
Thus, ownership is also defined by the right to control these basic resources. No one doubts that energy – and more so electricity in the current transition – falls into this category of basic resources and that public authorities are needed to guarantee the right to access them.
However, citizens must have the mechanisms to control these public authorities. On the one hand, so that they do not allow certain private actors to interfere arbitrarily over others, giving rise to relations of dependency; and on the other, so that they do not feed clientelistic practices that lead to oligarchic and despotic logics. Looking at the Spanish case, we can conclude that the energy ownership model is far from fulfilling its social function: on the one hand, the regulation does not define electricity as an essential good in terms of universal accessibility, and on the other hand, the structure of property rights over energy infrastructures is controlled by a small and powerful block of private companies.
As accessibility to electricity is not guaranteed ex-ante, what we do find in Spain are ex-post corrective measures whose level of effectiveness in universalising reasonable access is debatable: the bono social, Law 24/2015 against supply cuts, emergency aid, advisory services on rights, generation and optimisation of consumption, tax incentives or subsidies for renewables, or municipal supply companies. These measures do not tackle a problem that is structural and related to the legal system.
Beyond ex-post public intervention, it is fair to point out that there are private initiatives whose actions are not profit-oriented and which offer a supply service with certain public service overtones, as they put the coverage of their members‘ or clients’ energy needs before obtaining profitability. This is the case of the energy cooperatives, among which Som Energia stands out. In its case, it is also an actor that promotes and facilitates popular participation in renewable generation projects, as well as an energy culture based on the values of sustainability, social justice and democracy.
Energy communities and public sector participation
Energy access schemes are taking place in a context in which new figures are being introduced that can have an impact on energy ownership. This is the case of energy communities. They are a way of participation in the sector that blurs the boundary between the concepts of public and private ownership of energy, as they mix public and private actors (whether they carry out economic activity or not, whether they are associations or other social entities), and even individuals. In fact, in energy communities, the public administration (generally local) tends to be more present than it has traditionally been in the energy sector and to combine with actors belonging to the field of private law.
The purpose of these communities (which mainly take the legal form of cooperatives, associations or companies) is not to seek financial profitability, but to provide environmental, economic or social benefits to their members or to the areas where they operate. Their field of activity is very varied: renewable generation, distribution, supply, consumption, charging services for electric vehicles or other energy services.
Therefore, with the introduction of energy communities it becomes more evident that the importance of the public sector in relation to energy ownership is not only limited to the public ownership of energy infrastructures, but to the fact that it is the actor that can (and should, in our view) work on multiple fronts – including the promotion and development of these communities – to improve access to energy under the principles of universality (without excluding anyone) and unconditionality (ex-ante).
In this sense, energy communities can be among the most innovative formulas for approaching this objective, and with stronger leadership from the public sector to put them into practice where their autonomous development by private actors is more difficult due to biophysical or socio-economic and cultural factors. In fact, the current scenario places public administrations closer to citizens in a proactive position in the field of energy ownership and not only as promoters or managers of ex-post corrective measures such as those mentioned above.
The democratising effect of public-community collaboration
All these ingredients create a context where the presence of agreements between the public sector and local communities can take centre stage. Energy communities favour the formal expansion of these mixed models in proximity environments, but shouldn’t there be room for the development of public-community collaboration beyond the local level? If the correlation of forces is favourable, this type of collaboration is likely to gain ground at higher administrative levels, especially at the state level. But it will meet with strong resistance. The public-community partnership that does not seek financial profitability may mean altering existing power positions in the energy sector and attacking head-on the long-established regime of energy accumulation.
For the business network that dominates the sector, the institutionalisation of public-community partnerships at different levels means moving to a higher level of alertness than that of having to coexist with business actors that seek – and to a certain extent succeed in gradually eroding their hegemony, especially those that persist in a particular way. This is the case of Som Energia, a non-commercial business model with sufficient technical and economic solvency to sustain itself over time, and which has a large territorial capillarity and a growing social base.
Despite resistance from the status quo, in the current situation of ecological crisis and aggression from the ‘international right’, this is no time for the public authorities to give up on advancing in energy ownership schemes that allow for greater access and democratic control of this resource, stop the privatisation of a strategic sector, promote planned local development and social participation, or promote demand flexibility schemes.
This text is an adaptation of the original by the same authors: “El complejo debate sobre la propiedad de la energía. Aproximación para el caso español”, in Laín, B. (coord.), Ni público ni privado, ¿sino común? Usos, conceptos y comunidades en torno a los bienes comunes y la(s) propiedad(s), Bellaterra Edicions, Manresa, p. 253-273.