As with scaling up worker-owned business and cooperatives at the municipal level, the mechanism by which this will be advanced is socially controlled finance. In the Global North, where mass decarbonisation will start, this will be far simpler to administer as many countries have already hit a ceiling in terms of population and per capita energy use. What is more, they tend to enjoy robust state institutions and a significant base of renewable energy capacity.
The worker-led economy will be financed by locally based and geographically restricted institutions. But because of the shortened timeframe, financing energy transition will be the responsibility for much larger National Energy Investment Banks (NEIBs) operating through regional hubs and capitalised – depending on the country – to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds.
Alongside financing renewable energy generation and storage for public buildings, homes and workplaces, with this new infrastructure being democratically owned at the local level, these banks will also ofer credit for local energy cooperatives. Such measures will be accompanied by the financing of energy eficiency programmes whose intention will be to make conventional heating systems unnecessary and smart systems and LED lighting ubiquitous. We have known how to minimise energy consumption for heating – the primary issue in the colder countries of Europe, Russia and North America – for decades, the problem being market-based solutions have failed to materialise. With that in mind, the rate of change could easily exceed the 8 per cent annual target for colder countries – especially when one considers they could likely halve energy consumption simply through intelligent heat conservation.
Fundamental Principles
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