[P2P-F] Fwd: Energy, Work and Finance -- new report from The Corner House

Mon May 5 22:28:17 CEST 2014

hi George,

if you decide to write on energy, this report and the previous one from
corner house could be very useful,

Michel

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: The Corner House - new postings <notification-l at thecornerhouse.org.uk>
Date: Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 6:22 AM
Subject: Energy, Work and Finance -- new report from The Corner House
To: notification-l at thecornerhouse.org.uk

-- apologies in advance for cross postings --

-- please circulate --

'Energy, Work and Finance'
a new 124-page report from The Corner House

http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/energy-work-and-finance

Politicians and environmental activists often make it seem as if a
transition to a green, climate-friendly energy future were primarily a
matter of finding and deploying trillions of dollars to replace fossil
fuels, improve energy efficiency, solve energy poverty, and so on.

But they seldom ask just what these 'trillions' might consist of, what ATM
they might come from -- and what damage attempts to harness them might do
to the goal of equality and subsistence for all.

Progressive energy campaigns cannot succeed unless they take such issues
seriously.

This report, 'Energy, Work and Finance', aims to understand how both
energy and finance have been constructed and contested during stormy
transformations in industry, livelihood and exploitation over the past two
centuries.

The report first traces the ways in which modern energy practices were
shaped by 19th-century industrial elites struggling to accumulate as much
as possible from the work of ordinary people.

It shows how thermodynamics helped untangle different energies -- heat,
mechanical, electromagnetic, chemical -- from their social and natural
contexts, before combining them into a single commodifiable whole.

It relates how the steam-coal combination enabled capital to concentrate
labour at any urban location it chose, disentangle it from place and the
cyclical time of days and seasons, and make good on its perennial threat
to discard and impoverish workers who did not come up to proper standards
of obedience while micromanaging them at minimal cost.

The report then follows some of the connections that have linked energy to
finance ever since energy supply networks and a distinguishable 'energy
sector' first emerged in the 1800s. It describes how financial
institutions have made possible infrastructure for transferring
high-quality energy from hinterland to metropolis.

It also also touches on the ways in which energy and financial speculation
are linked; an oil-based pattern of house ownership, particularly in the
US, became integral to the growth of speculative real-estate-based credit;
and the ways in which finance is pushing other sectors, including
infrastructure development, into exaggerated forms of plunder in order to
attain unrealistic rates of profit.

Throughout, the report stresses the destructive creativity and innovation
of today's financial sector, with its plethora of investment banks,
private equity firms, mutual funds, development banks, hedge funds,
sovereign wealth funds, master limited partnerships, climate funds, oil
companies and real estate investment trusts.

In this context, the report finds, small-scale, decommodified energy
projects, controlled by and for local people, are extremely unlikely to
attract pension funds and other institutional investors. The most that can
be expected is that investors will try to siphon off a portion of
publicly-funded contracts intended for off-grid village electrification or
university or hospital schemes for their own benefit.

As energy mining and energy consumption climbs, ordinary people's
opportunities for provisioning themselves, getting about independently, or
learning autonomously, are closed out in both extraction and production
zones. A 'green' or 'democratic' energy on the thermodynamic model
developed during the 19th century is virtually a contradiction in terms.

The report concludes that looking at energy and finance not as static
'things' but as political processes in motion is crucial to strategies for
a green, democratic, liveable energy future. Effective energy activists
will challenge dominant notions of both energy and finance, and join
existing oppositional forces in struggles already being waged over a wide
variety of arenas, from science to feminism to labour rights and race.

For such activists, the deeper, more pertinent question about evolving
struggles over energy -- in which bitterly antagonistic social groups are
constantly responding and adjusting to their opponents -- is not 'what is
your alternative?' but rather 'whose side are you on?'.

'Energy, Work and Finance'
a new 124-page report from The Corner House

http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/energy-work-and-finance

Note: A limited number of paper copies of this report are available.
Please contact The Corner House for more information.

email: enquiries AT thecornerhouse.org.uk

This report builds on two previous reports:

'Energy Security For Whom? For What?'
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/energy-security-whom-what

'Energy Alternatives: Surveying the Territory'
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/energy-alternatives

We hope you find it useful and stimulating
with best wishes from all at The Corner House

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