The people of California were understandably angry to learn that PG&E, one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, ignored fire risks in favor of profits when maintaining their energy grid. Since 2015, and possibly as recent as this year, fires linked to PG&E’s equipment have consumed hundreds of thousands of acres, destroyed over fourteen thousand homes, and caused many deaths. A campaign was launched to municipalize the investor-owned utility (IOU) and bring the publicly traded company under control of the public they served. Other cities have recently municipalized, are considering municipalizing, or are in the process of municipalization.

Energy production in the United States has a complicated structure, consisting of utilities which deliver electricity via their infrastructure of poles, lines, transformers, and substations; providers, which buy electricity wholesale and sell it to consumers; and power generators that produce the electricity, usually by burning fossil fuels. Whether the energy sector is fully or partially public varies by state. According to the EIA, in the United States there are far more publicly-owned and cooperatively-owned utilities than there are IOUs (1,958, 812, and 168, respectively). Nevertheless, nearly three-quarters of Americans got their power in 2017 from companies who were responsible for returning profits to their stockholders. While the public regulates technical matters (such as the interconnection of grids and the synchronization of power generators connecting to the grid) and financial matters such as rates, most power is generated and delivered for private gain. In other words, IOUs are accountable first to their investors, even though electricity is an essential service. Most people depend upon a reliable supply of electricity for their day-to-day functioning.

In what follows I discuss the energy democracy movement and its call to expand democratic power over energy production, distribution, and development. In addition to sparking wildfires and driving climate change, the world’s energy system is linked to a host of justice issues. A commitment to a robust conception of democracy and social sustainability is the best way to guard against replicating those injustices as the world transitions to a renewable energy system. Philosophers can say much more about the value of energy democracy and the role it can play in creating a more sustainable, more just future.

Energy Democracy

For the first quarter of the twentieth century, municipalities controlled most utilities. Today, re-municipalization is one of the aims of the energy democracy movement. A number of factors are driving the movement, though decarbonization and new developments in renewables are the most important (Szulecki 2018). Advocates of energy democracy point to the features of renewable technology that make it more amenable to localized and democratic control (Stephens 2019).

For one thing, the fossil fuel system is centralized, while renewables are distributed. Centralization concentrates fossil power. The transition from free renewable energy to fossil fuels around the nineteenth century in England found an advantage in coal over waterpower. Coal can be burned when and where one wanted the work done without being tethered to time or place; more importantly, this allowed factories to relocate in urban areas with a ready and steady supply of cheap labor (Malm 2016). Fossil fuels don’t depend on water to flow or wind to blow (or today, sun to shine). 

However, generating electricity from fossil fuels engenders a different kind of dependence: on extractive industries to supply a constant stream of consumable fuel, which is found in relatively concentrated areas when compared to renewables. Mitchell (2011) notes how workers in coal-rich countries transitioning to a fossil economy were able to leverage disruption of these flows to democratize—for instance, by striking and refusing to physically move coal. However, the fluidity of oil which is moved by pumps through pipes did not allow for the same influence. Electricity flows much the same way, through immovable infrastructure that is owned by private investors with the intention of earning returns. Many IOUs are effectively monopolies or are the remainder of actual monopolies that existed before deregulation of the energy sector (Dawson 2020, 37). While generators may compete with one another to bring electricity to market, and providers with one another to bundle that energy to sell at rates attractive to consumers, there is no choice in the infrastructure which delivers electricity. Fossil energy exists in an oligarchical form. Energy cannot be generated unless returns flow back through that infrastructure toward the mines and wells that extract fossil fuels.

In contrast, wind and solar can be generated on site and scaled for site-specific needs without relying on constant inputs from an oligarchical industry. As production and storage technologies improve, grid dependency will decrease. This makes possible what Szulecki calls the energy prosumer—a producer and consumer who takes an active role in the governance of energy matters rather than a passive one consuming electron flows measured in dollars per kilowatt-hour. Much like striking coal miners, prosumers are essential to the flow of energy. Their interests cannot be ignored. The prosumer best captures what Szulecki identifies as the three characteristic aims of the energy democracy movement: democratic popular sovereignty, participatory governance, and civic ownership in matters of energy production and distribution. Clear indicators of energy democracy can be found by asking: Who has access to affordable energy? Is the public involved in making energy decisions? What share of the grid is co-owned by municipalities? Reclaiming energy infrastructure is just one method of securing energy democracy. Others include restructuring the grid to allow for more distributed generation and increasing the power the communities have over energy policies that affect them (Stephens 2019). And given the looming threat of climate change, energy policy affects members of all communities, albeit in differentiated ways.

Critical Democracy

Some wonder whether counting on energy democracy is a good idea when a swift energy transition is so crucial to avoiding more dangerous climate change. After all, democracy is slow and cumbersome, while climate change requires swift action. Whyte (2020) has highlighted the problematic assumptions behind this kind of crisis framing, but others have leaned into it. Environmental thinker and Gaia theorist James Lovelock posed the idea that addressing climate change may require giving up on democracy. He blames “cheeky” egalitarianism and adopts problematic war language to recommend a more “authoritarian world” (an alarming suggestion in light of the recent uptick in ecofascism). Fortunately, many writers rose to publicly defend democracy, even while claiming it’s the planet’s biggest enemy, or that it’s failing the planet. Spoiler alert: despite what their provocative titles suggest, these articles end by arguing that more, not less, democracy is the answer; that is, a more robust democracy than what we see operating in most democracies today.

This is not a new discussion. Val Plumwood (1995) once asked whether democracy has failed ecology. She insists that democracy, as an ideal, is one of the best checks against environmental injustice because it is adaptive and corrective, responsive in ways that authoritarian regimes need not be. In this sense, democracy might even be considered the most sustainable form of government. Democracies allow for community members to express “where the shoe pinches,” as Dewey put it (2008 [1927], 364). Plumwood suggests this responsiveness to ecological problems is a key indicator for whether a democracy is functioning well: “Failure of ecological responsiveness when there is widespread citizen concern and support for change, can be taken as an indication something is rotten” (141). Inequality is a major source of rot. Inequality positions some to distance themselves from ecological harms or even benefit from them. Think of the harmful byproducts of the fossil fuel infrastructure. “The most oppressed and dispossessed people in a society are those who are made closest to the condition of nature, who are made to share the same expendable condition as nature” (139). Democracy, when functioning well, gives equal voice to those affected by ecological harms who rightly call for correction.  

However, Plumwood too adds that not all forms of democracy are equally suitable for responding to ecological challenges. Liberal democracy too narrowly limits the roles of participants to either voter or consumer. It also leaves “crucial areas of environmental impact beyond the range of democratic corrections and reshaping” (146). These limits inhibit democracy’s responsiveness to ecological problems. A critical democracy is reflexive about these limitations. It calls to expand democratic power over the major drivers of ecological degradation. And the single most important driver of anthropogenetic climate change is energy—its technology, production, and distribution. Only when democracy isn’t thorough enough is it inimical to ecology.

Energy and Justice

The energy sector produces three-quarters of emissions. This includes all power sources such as electricity generation and the production, transportation, and consumption of other fuels such as petroleum. Studies suggest pathways to net-zero emissions by 2050 will require a near-total electrification of the energy system in the United States. Transportation is the country’s largest source of carbon emissions within the energy sector due to its reliance on petroleum, so as it electrifies, electricity production will become even more impactful. This will require many new policies at all levels of government, new wind and solar plants, and other updates to the energy infrastructure.

Alongside wildfires and further global warming, the current global fossil fuel energy system leads to countless human rights violations, exacerbates sovereignty issues, and creates sacrifice zones. Authors Sovacool and Dworkin (2014) have identified at least eight elements of energy justice: availability, affordability, due process (to respect law and human rights), access to information (to keep governments and corporations accountable), sustainability, intra-generational equity, inter-generational equity, and responsibility (to minimize environmental degradation). For instance, lacking reliable access to affordable energy is deadly. The indoor air pollution from firewood, dung, or charcoal as a heating and cooking fuel is estimated to kill nearly twice as many people in 2030 worldwide than malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS combined; it increases risk of lung cancer far more than does smoking cigarettes (228–229). Regarding access to information, oil executives knew about the link between their product and climate change, and then led a campaign to mislead the public for decades about it, delaying valuable time for global adaptation, costing countless lives, displacements, and other injustices—and in exercise of their oligarchical power, they’re still throwing their weight against local climate policy.

It’s important to recognize that a renewable energy infrastructure is not immune to replicating these injustices, especially when the scale of the energy transition will be massive and the pace rapid. The temptation remains to bypass human rights in the mining of material for wind turbines and solar panels, or to create sacrifice zones that jeopardize access to land and water to build renewable energy farms, if energy is produced for private profit or to be consumed elsewhere far from those who would live with the harmful byproducts. Robust, critical energy democracy can help ensure these changes are just, and that they are socially sustainable.

Socially Sustainable Power

Allying with a framework of sustainability to advance the goals of energy democracy is useful since it is the dominant framework within which environmental policies are discussed at both local and global levels of governance. It’s often traced back to the Brundtland Report (1987), which offered the now commonly-referenced definition of sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” It is typically understood through three overlapping dimensions: environmental, economic, and social. The environmental dimension is perhaps the most common. It concerns the integrity of ecosystems, air and water quality, and environmental resources. For instance, environmentally sustainable practices will not negatively impact the air, water, or soil upon which healthy ecosystems depend. Economic sustainability examines the impact of economic activity on ecosystems: where incentives exist to promote dirty or green practices, whether markets can regulate environmental harms, or how policies can impact job growth. Social sustainability is often thought to be the most difficult dimension to define. Perhaps because this is the only dimension that includes explicitly normative commitments: to justice, equity, representation, and democratic modes of power. Social sustainability is meant to ensure that policies have a positive impact on people and communities. Although the Brundtland Report included social sustainability to underscore the connection between environmental and social systems, indicators for this dimension can seem more subjective and unclear when compared with the supposedly objective and quantifiable indicators of the other two dimensions.

Yet, plenty of measurable indicators exist for social sustainability and reinforce its link with the other two dimensions. And this measurable evidence suggests that Plumwood is right: democracies are better at responding to ecological problems, especially when corruption is low (Povitkina 2018). Studies show U.S. states with “greater inequalities… (measured by voter participation, tax fairness, Medicaid access and educational attainment levels) had less stringent environmental policies, greater levels of environmental stress and higher rates of infant mortality and premature deaths” (Agyeman 2018, 752). Political ecologists such as Agyeman have well documented the worldwide pairing of ecological degradation and social justice concerns.

If social sustainability is linked (empirically as well as theoretically) to democracy, then threats to democracy are likewise ecological threats. Voting rights are currently under attack in many states and that matters for the energy transition. A recent Yale and George Mason University joint study shows that black and Latinx/Hispanic voters are more likely than white voters to support climate-friendly policies, including energy policy. BIPOC communities are more often located in sacrifice zones, at the frontlines of environmental devastation. Denying voice to the most vulnerable impairs democracy’s ability to correct and adapt. Likewise, the dismantling of the fossil fuel oligarchy will create an abundance of new opportunities. Without critical democracy, these opportunities may once again concentrate in the hands of the wealthy rather than being distributed more equally. Currently, workers in the wind and solar industry are less likely to be women or people of color.

Finally, while threats to democracy are ecological threats, ecological threats are in turn threats to democracy. Governments raise revenues in various ways, including through property taxes. The cost of storm damage from cyclones rose six percent a year since 1970 even after inflation. These storms along with other environmental catastrophes deplete funding by devaluing property and through costly repairs. This impairs the ability of governments to provide essential goods and services, which in turn undermines confidence in democratic governments to solve problems, especially at the local level. As climate change brings even more damaging storms and stresses safety nets, this can lead to more inequality and begin to rot away democratic infrastructure.

Prima facie, both democracy and social sustainability can seem like vaguely defined concepts. This is where philosophy can help. Not only do philosophers excel at conceptual clarification, but we have thought long and hard about the makeup of democracy, its thick and thin forms, and the virtues of a democratic mode of power. Philosophy can also better articulate what expanded forms of democracy might look like in the spirit of those called for by Dewey, Plumwood, and others—especially expanding it to include energy justice and democracy. The challenge will be for philosophers to remain responsive to the already existing struggles aligning themselves with energy democracy to better realize energy justice for their communities and to avoid over-abstraction or universalization of claims.

The examples I gave above of the Lovelockians receiving swift refutation are promising; however, as updated IPCC reports herald the further deterioration of global environmental systems, the arguments to override democratic processes—or to hold tighter to the undemocratic ones—will surely renew. The allegation that social sustainability is ill-defined and ambiguous is often used to place it in the backseat and allow either the environmental or economic dimensions to drive policy. Philosophy can do more to bolster a holistic conception of sustainability and better articulate the inherently normative aim of developing more just, more sustainable ways of sharing power and generating energy. Finally, it’s worth underscoring that the energy democracy I am optimistic about should not be misread as a naïve endorsement of democracy as it currently exists—a democracy that is so easily hijacked by monied interests or politicians who flirt with misinformation campaigns to galvanize their constituents. Rather, expanding participation, input, and ownership in communities who will be affected most by the energy transition, such as those who live near proposed windfarms, may garner more buy-in than externally proposed plans which privately hoard rather than publicly distribute benefits. This is true in the United States, and especially true of historically marginalized communities worldwide. Democracy is a sustainable way of sharing power precisely when it treats everyone as a stakeholder. Nor should greater local-level energy democracy be understood as inconsistent with greater national-level action. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine any massive energy transition without such wide-scale action. When private companies refuse to upgrade infrastructure, putting profits over safety, public power can step in. National policy and incentives can help empower local communities in these efforts.

The intersecting and overlapping connections between social and other forms of sustainability are clear. This makes a commitment to social sustainability an indispensable one. A just transition to renewables demands expanded, critical democracy; a democracy which does not leave sectors of society unchecked by public power, especially those sectors which stand to make the largest impact on the global environment. Energy democracy and similar movements will be key to ensuring the coming transition to renewables avoids reproducing the injustices of the current energy system for the sake of economic or even environmental reasons. Social sustainability keeps equity, representation, and publicity on the table even as advocates of the problematic crisis framing call to bench democracy for the sake of expedience. If history provides any guidance, solutions to environmental problems are more likely to miss their mark without a commitment to justice: they shuffle around rather than solve problems. Philosophy can engage more with energy literature and with those involved in energy justice movements to help illustrate what a meaningful commitment to energy justice should look like. They can help defend the role of democracy in the coming energy transition. Thoroughly democratic power is the most sustainable form of power for building a greener, more just future.

Images for this post were taken from NASA Earth Observatory and were taken by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview, VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE, GIBS/Worldview, and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership, and Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. 

Eric S. Godoy

Eric S. Godoy is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Illinois State University. He specializes in environmental philosophy, ethics, and social-political philosophy. He has recently published on divestment, dinosaur films, and dentists who hunt lions. His collaborative, transdisciplinary work on climate research has been cited by the IPCC. In his spare time, he makes and plays both music and board games.