In 2015, world leaders adopted a set of global goals to eradicate poverty, protect functioning ecosystems and ensure prosperity for all humanity as part of a new sustainable development agenda that would culminate in 2030 : Agenda 2030.
In September 2023, the project reached the halfway point and a meeting was convened at United Nations Headquarters to conduct a comprehensive review. Once again, world leaders met to observe what was being done well and what was not. Some economic and social analysts noted that only 15 percent of the goals to be achieved within 50 percent of the term had been developed; The blame obviously lies with the Covid-19 pandemic declared by the WHO in 2020 and the war in Ukraine. Others, even more pointedly, directly denounced a situation worse than that of the starting box, that is, worse than in 2015.
Overcoming the equator
As numerous international reports show, we have failed to stop the ongoing destruction of most ecosystems or the dispossession of the communities that live there. Mining, which emerged forcefully as a cornerstone of a just transition after the 2008 market collapse, has also failed to transition and is, in fact, increasingly speculative. We have set ourselves the goal of replacing it with sustainable funding models that are intended to significantly mitigate the impact on the environment and society. It represents itself as the most cross-cutting sector of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and has been present since the first of them or SDG1: Mining and the end of poverty or the second SDG2: Mining and the eradication of hunger, etc., mining and Health, well-being, equality, decent work, climate change, peace, strengthening institutions…
The result, on the contrary, is an increasing intensification of environmental and social pressures per unit of economic activity, as can be deduced from the work of authors such as William Rees of the Post Carbon Institute or, for years, of the International Resource Panel (IRP) of the United Nations Environment Program. The generic statements of ecological transformation routes, which are based on the idea of achieving green growth with the support of Green Deal-like programs that, derived from the 17 SDGs, were launched in Europe, especially after the pandemic, are thereby denied. . Furthermore, this contradiction is consolidated by a proven fact, of which mining is the main actor: that the efficiency of the market thanks to digital technology (a large consumer of energy and minerals) has facilitated the plunder of local communities and their territories. Another manifestation of the rebound effect or Jevons paradox of an extractive nature.
When the 17 SDGs were launched in September 2015, large areas of the planet had already been abandoned or were in irreversible decline. The utilitarian values promoted by the neoliberal system, which in turn normalize the vision of nature as a raw material factory, have led to the hegemony of a relational model of domination in relation to nature with extractivist goals. This extractive model undermines the environment that sustains us and is unable to escape its destruction when economic benefits depend on the environmental impacts being shifted elsewhere and borne by its inhabitants, including non-humans, since they have no influence on the decisions that determine the profitability of the commodity market.
Therefore, an energy system that supports our thermo-industrial societies exactly as before, but with very little or no fossil fuels, based on modern technologies for the capture of renewable energies with the highest level of optimization and efficiency, with digitalized and automated management in its use Even the use of artificial ones Intelligence would be questionable given previous experiences. We should not repeat the old postulates of mineral substitution, which has never existed in history. The most recent failure, the Smart 2020 project with the implementation of automation, Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 and other digital processes, was designed in 2008 under the guidance of Merkel and Sarkozy to “refound” capitalism after its last setback, but we have already established that none of these goals and objectives of optimization, emissions, efficiency or savings have been achieved. However, this time it starts from an undeniable reality: the emergence of the decentralization of energy matrices as a new factor for more efficient management.
Public energy
Among the options presented to correct the failure of the Smart 2020 Manifesto and now the 2030 Agenda, which some people saw coming and which are reflected in thoughtful scientific and social studies, include reports from the IPCC, IPBES, etc., the… To test the capacity for transnational collaboration, several solutions were considered. One of these was the creation of public energy companies. There are many models, from full state ownership as in France to the role of the state as a minority shareholder as in the case of Italy.
In 2022, Unidas Podemos’ proposal to create a state-owned public energy company was rejected by the Spanish Congress. However, several political groupings have continued to work in the same direction, opening the possibility of doing so at regional, local or municipal levels with different forms of participation, including public-private participation.
The idea seems appropriate and hopeful, because it could mean the final break of the old regime of oligopolies between politics and business and the revolving doors in the energy sector, which is bleeding so much, especially the citizens. Or not?
As world leaders headed to the New York meeting, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced an extraordinary package of measures for the wind industry in her State of the Union address. Most analysts speak directly of a rescue. With the signature of European governments, the European Union has set a target of 420 GW of wind capacity in 2030. However, the wind industry has never believed in such a goal. The technical difficulties of some designs and supply chains not functioning on time for more than five years led to the industry itself seeing it as a very real risk “that wind energy expansion would take place in China and not Europe.” ».
As if that were not enough, Chinese scientists are reluctant to continue exploiting the precious geological resources necessary for our “green transition” at bargain prices, and now they themselves are warning us that only “intensive geological exploration of key minerals causes extreme damage “. for the environment. As if they suddenly realized what we in the West know very well.
Currently, three-quarters of the cobalt in our digital devices and our infrastructure for converting and producing “clean” energy – with the help of Chinese resources and Western capital – has made the Democratic Republic of Congo one of the poorest and most enslaved countries. wealthy countries in the world (74% of their population lives below the poverty line). There are many voices trying to stop this environmental injustice as it is in direct contradiction to the 17 SDGs. But the world remains indifferent because we apparently cannot or do not want to see any other way out than the dream of green growth, whether public or private.
Given the increasing accumulation of toxic assets, establishing a public energy company can be seen as a double-edged sword. It would serve, in a way, to bring together those toxic assets that are rapidly growing due to the constant collision with the ecosystem, geological, thermodynamic and ethical boundaries of our extractivist societies and the consequent annihilation of life and territories in thousands of corners of the planet . Or, if appropriate, the model of public energy companies could also offer interesting levers to accompany a real transformation of the energy model and thus lead an authentic green revolution also from a technological and humanitarian perspective.
In the first case, it could be an additional rescue of the energy sector, which bears great responsibility for the eco-social crisis. This rescue would be motivated by the same vision of growth and accumulation of wealth in the hands that have shaken the cradle of the neoliberal system since 2022, such as gas and nuclear power. The second case would mean a real transformation or revolution, depending on the pace and depth of the structural changes of the current economic system, one would assume that on a planet whose physical and social boundaries continue to be exceeded, a neither sustainable nor sustainable material and energetic growth is impossible. In this second case, all the reduction, optimization, decentralization and controlled growth formulas envisaged in an increasing number of scientific, social and humanitarian studies and reports or in such valuable documents as the opinion SC/048 of the Economic and Social Committee would be implemented as soon as possible. European Social Commission (EESC) of the EU on new sustainable economic models.
However, for this it is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition to break with the logic of growth, extractivism and, of course, capital accumulation to the detriment of millions of dispossessed and ecosystems emptied, devastated or abandoned, such as notorious landfills. The future of public energy companies can of course be bright, but as long as the guarantee of their functionality includes the concept of sustainability in all its prostituted splendor, it regains its essential meaning: the maintenance of the balance and functions that the foundations of nature provide the vital support of the socio-ecological system.
Cover photo: Itaipu Dam, Brazil and Paraguay. It is the second largest hydroelectric power station in the world in terms of installed capacity. / Martin St Aman
Taken from CTXT