The Green New Deal, Net Zero Carbon,and the Crucial Role of Public Ownership - Conference Report

[Editor: below is the first part of this report which is 50 pages in total.  See the complete report and links within the report here.]

November 2019

This report was prepared by John Treat, Sean Sweeney and Irene HongPing Shen of Trade Unions for
Energy Democracy (TUED). The opinions expressed herein may not reflect the policies and positions
of unions participating in TUED.

About Trade Unions for Energy Democracy
TUED is a growing global network of trade unions and close allies committed to finding real solutions
to the climate emergency—solutions that take the science seriously, that face facts about global
energy and emissions, and that recognize the unique, historic role and capacity of labor to effect
positive change. The TUED network currently spans 74 union bodies in 24 countries—including four
Global Union Federations, three regional organizations, and nine national centers—as well as nearly
a dozen research, policy and advocacy allies.

For more information on how unions can participate in TUED, please see:
• What Does It Mean for Unions to "Participate" in TUED?
• Why It’s Important for Unions to Support TUED
Note: If you are reading a printed copy of this report, you can download an electronic copy with live
hyperlinks from the TUED website here.
http://unionsforenergydemocracy.org/
The Green New Deal, Net-Zero Carbon,
and the Crucial Role of Public Ownership

Introduction and Overview

On September 28, 2019, more than 150 trade union representatives, activists and policy allies from
more than a dozen countries came together in New York City for a one-day international conference:
“The Green New Deal, Net-Zero Carbon, and the Crucial Role of Public Ownership.” The conference
was the latest convened under the banner of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED). TUED is a
global community of unions, in partnership with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation—New York Office,
and the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies (SLU). The full program for the day is available
here.

The conference took place against the backdrop of the massive “Global Climate Strike” actions led
by young people around the world, coinciding with the UN “Climate Week” of talks in New York City.
In the weeks before those actions, TUED organized a “Global Web Forum” on the theme, Global
Youth-Led and General Climate Strikes: How Are Unions Responding?, and subsequently compiled a
list of union statements and actions in support of the strike calls. Ultimately, actions in the name of the “Global Climate Strike” reportedly saw 7.6 million people take to the streets in nearly every country on Earth, with 73 trade
unions taking part. Nearly a year earlier, activists from the Sunrise Movement had occupied US House of
Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office in November 2018, successfully getting their demand for a “Green New Deal” (GND) before the eyes of the world. In the year since that action, the idea of a GND has shifted debates
around climate protection, social justice, the energy transition, and more, especially in the global North. Various public figures—including most notably US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and US Senator Bernie Sanders—have issued specific, ambitious policy proposals, and the GND is now an unavoidable feature of political debate.
Although debates and policy demands around the “Green New Deal” rightly extend far beyond climate action—to include demands around social equity, employment, healthcare, education and more—the fact remains that delivering on those demands requires urgent action on energy and emissions. According to the latest science, as synthesized by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world must reach a state of “net-zero” greenhouse gas emissions by mid-Century in order to have even a reasonable chance of limiting overall planetary warming to 1.5C—a rise in
temperature that will already mean massive suffering for millions around the world, and significant disruption to existing societies. Furthermore, reaching net-zero in that time frame will involve, in the IPCC’s own words, “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”

The conference took place against the dramatic backdrop of mass action by students, youth climate activists, trade
unionists and many others around the world.

Conference Report
Contrary to headlines from the business-friendly press celebrating the latest “record low” prices for
renewable energy—and the constant refrain that “the transition is inevitable”—a sober look at the
data show clearly that the world has not yet even begun to make the kinds of changes that are
necessary. As the Washington Post reported in late 2018, “Few countries are meeting the Paris
climate goals.” Around the same time, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that global
carbon emissions would reach a new high in 2018, further eroding the world’s chances of keeping
overall warming within agreed limits, and prompting IEA head Fatih BIrol to declare, “I have very bad
news. My numbers are giving me some despair.” His despair could only have been compounded
several months later when the same agency reported in May 2019 that deployment of new
renewable power generation capacity stalled in 2018, at a time when it needs to be growing
dramatically and consistently.
Meanwhile, in further evidence that the neoliberal “Green Growth” miracle has wilted on the vine,
even Germany’s Energiewende—once held up as the poster child for a profit-driven energy transition,
and still too often invoked as proof of success even by progressive voices who have simply remained
blissfully uninformed—was pronounced by the country’s prestigious Der Spiegel magazine as a
“botched job.”
Although the deployment of renewable energy is still growing in many places— even somewhat impressively here and
there, now and then—the overall trends fall massively short of what is required. Overall investment and deployment remain far behind what is required in order to even begin to displace fossil fuels from the global energy mix to any significant degree, including even in the power sector, frequently held up as proof that “the transition is underway”—a fact that
managed to surprise BP’s group chief economist Spencer Dale, who confessed in mid-2018 upon release of
the company’s Statistical Review of of World Energy for that year: “I hadn’t realised that so little progress had been made until I looked at these data.”

TUED’s analysis of energy and emissions trends, and of the results of current, investor-focused
climate policy, leave little room for doubt that the trade union movement must aggressively pivot
towards a defense and embrace of public ownership of all aspects of our energy systems. The
conference proceedings presented below provide ample supporting evidence, and the urgency
cannot be over-stated.

Goals of the Conference
The conference had two main goals. The first goal was to show how both public ownership and a
“public goods” approach are critical to achieving “zero carbon” and the other core objectives of the
Green New Deal. The second goal was to make visible key struggles around ownership and control— 

including anti-privatization fights—that are taking place around the world, and how these struggles
are leading to a “new internationalism” that puts both class and climate at the center of progressive
politics. The full program for the day is available here.

In the days before the conference, many of the presenters had also participated in a two-day TUED
Strategic Retreat, also held in New York City and graciously hosted by 32BJ SEIU in their boardroom.
The retreat brought together trade union leaders and progressive policy leaders from more than a
dozen countries—including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, South
Africa, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States (including Puerto Rico) and Uruguay—as
well as from the ITUC, and from global union federations Public Services International (PSI) and the
International Transport Workers Federation (ITF).

Key Themes and Highlights
Although we cannot do justice here to the full range of contributions and discussions over the course
of the day, several key themes, observations and suggestions are worth highlighting.

Investor-Focused Climate Policy Is Not Delivering an Energy Transition
At this point, the failure of climate policy has become virtually an “anchor point” for TUED’s analysis
and programmatic work; the evidence has been laid out at length and explained in detail through
TUED's Working Papers and other occasional writings (for instance here and here). In summary,
because overall demand for energy continues to rise faster than deployment of renewable sources,
both renewables and fossil fuels are growing alongside each other, and even the fuel mix in power
generation has hardly shifted. In other words, what we are witnessing is not a transition to
sustainable future energy systems, but a reconfiguration of the global energy system that continues
to emit ever-greater greenhouse gas emissions. The current “carrots and sticks” policy framework
aimed at private investors must be replaced with a clear, pro-public and “public goods” approach.
The contributions and discussions at this conference provided further confirmation that the main
conclusion is not only true, but increasingly indisputable, and of increasing concern.

Privatization of State-Owned Electricity Utilities Has Failed, But Alternatives Exist
As noted by Transnational Institute’s Daniel Chavez, the existence of real alternatives to privatized
public services is increasingly demonstrated by empirical evidence; it is not merely an ideological
position. Presenters and participants referenced a range of major research projects and publications
released in recent years documenting in various ways and various contexts that the broad World
Bank / IMF policy framework aimed at privatizing and liberalizing public services has failed, that
alternatives exist, and that they can be won.

Publications such as TNI’s Reclaiming Public Service: How cities and citizens are turning back
privatisation (2017) and EPSU’s Going Public: A Decarbonised, Affordable and Democratic Energy
System for Europe (2019) provide invaluable empirical data about, and concrete examples of,
struggles to defend and reclaim public services. At the same time, a September 2019 World Bank
report, Rethinking Power Sector Reform in the Developing World, acknowledges that privatization of
power in the global South has fallen dramatically short of proclaimed intentions, and just eight
countries in the global South have fully privatized their electricity systems.

Defending Public Ownership of Energy Requires a Reform Agenda That Can Drive
“De-Marketization”
Unions in South Africa, South Korea, Mexico, Puerto Rico and elsewhere are fighting to keep state
utilities in public hands even as they try to advance the shift to publicly owned, renewable sources of
power generation and democratization of the utilities themselves. SAFTU’s Ruth Ntlokotse
emphasized that the “unbundling” of the public power utility there—which is a standard first step in
electricity privatization—would undermine possibilities for cooperation and planning across the
power sector.
But there was also widespread recognition that defending the current model of public ownership is
not enough. Many state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have been “marketized” and “corporatized” as
part of World Bank-led power sector “reform,” turning provision of electricity from a public service
into a profit-making commodity. In the words of TNI’s Daniel Chavez, “We need to defend public
ownership, but maybe we need to rethink the whole idea of public enterprise. And that’s a big
challenge.”
Norwegian trade unionist and scholar Asbjørn Wahl connected the struggle for reformed public
utilities to class struggle, observing that even public ownership of energy assets by neoliberal states
under deregulated the markets “can hardly be compared to what public ownership meant in the
post-WWII period, under much more favorable power relations in many parts of the world”—for
instance, the New Deal in the US, or the building of the welfare state in Europe. “Those
achievements,” he noted, “were based on a balance of power that was much more favorable to
workers.” Similarly, SUNY Albany School of Law’s Eleanor Stein noted, “Government-owned energy
is not going to be any better than the government that owns it.”

Confidence is Rising to Reverse Electricity Privatization Where It Has Happened
The fight to take previously privatized electricity sector assets back into public control is gaining
momentum. In the United Kingdom, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has committed to renationalizing
transmission and distribution systems and to the setting up of a new National Energy Administration
to oversee a radical decarbonization agenda. However, it has been slow to embrace the idea of a full
reclaiming of the system to public ownership, from generation through to supply or retail. A number
of UK unions support this full re-nationalization, and the 2019 annual conference of the Labour Party
voted for a full reclaiming of the power sector to public ownership.

In Australia, the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) is fighting for more jobs, better rosters and
reduced hours even within an existing, privately owned offshore wind project, while also trying to
organize to move beyond such projects and towards the massive, publicly funded range of projects
the country needs, to accompany a “just transition” for workers in coal-fired power stations and the
coal mines that supply them. As MUA’s Penny Howard poses the challenge, “How do we actually
pool the wealth that’s in the system and force democratic control of it?”

In the US, there is growing awareness to challenge ownership of the “investor-owned utilities”—
especially in the wake of the latest destructive fires in California, which have been blamed in part on
cost-cutting maintenance over years.

Defending and Reclaiming Public Energy Requires Building Union Power
Throughout the day, there was a recurring emphasis on the need to understand the struggle for
climate protection and a “just transition” in terms of class and power, and to organize and build
accordingly. South African Federation of Trade Unions’ General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi warned
that statements suggesting the transition to a low-carbon economy is “inevitable” or “well
underway” are “very dangerous” and “serve to disarm us.” Similarly, long-time union activist and
author Asbjørn Wahl cautioned that it is not a lack of “political will” or “ambition” that is responsible
for the failure to make progress towards climate targets, but a class contradiction; as he memorably
put it, “There is a hell of a lot of [political] will there—but it is not the same as ours.”
Embracing and acting on this recognition means a conscious embrace of a vibrant, forward looking,
trade unionism that connects with other social movements and builds alliances with all those
struggling for social, economic, racial and climate justice. It also means a willingness to be
constructively critical of false solutions that maintain, or remain hostage to, the idea that private
markets can produce the kinds of changes we desperately need.

The Transition Must Take into Account the Development Needs of the Global South
Conference contributions from the global South underscored the fact that realizing a vision of truly
sustainable development that can truly tackle problems of poverty, inequality and unemployment
must be accomplished without inflicting irreparable damage on the ecosystems that sustain life.
Speakers from the South recognized the need to find an alternative to “development as usual” –
which, if left uninterrupted, will hurt the South over the longer term.
In Latin America, the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA) is “trying to challenge the
hegemonic narrative” through its political program—the Development Platform of the Americas
(PLADA).” In South Africa, unions are linking “just transition” with developmental concerns. In the
words of SAFTU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi:
A discussion on just transition should not be separated from the debate on the imperative of development. In
South Africa, the central crisis facing humanity is under-development…. A move away from fossils and carbon
economy that is not taking into consideration this massive development challenge will lose credibility. Any
program that will worsen this already will not enjoy popular support—in fact, it will strengthen the hand of the
denialists.

There Is an Urgent Need for Technical, Programmatic Work
Nearly every presentation on the day provided rich, granular, concrete detail on specific technical
questions of serious importance to what is required to achieve the energy transition at local, regional
or national levels, and we have tried to capture and convey as much of that as possible in the
proceedings that follow. But more importantly, the conference made very clear that there is an
enormous amount of detailed planning work—much of it collaborative across sectors—that urgently
needs to be carried out. If anything, that work is far behind schedule—two decades at least, if not
three or four. The knowledge and skills of organized labor, and labor’s history of international
solidarity, can and should be brought to bear in developing the detailed technical plans, identifying
the supply chains and training and skills requirements, etc.

Proposal for 2020 Mobilization: “Workers and Environment Week”
Among the many useful contributions, there was at least one suggestion for a In terms of concrete
suggestions for next steps, Peter Knowlton, outgoing President of the United Electrical, Radio and
Machine Workers of America (UE), proposed a specific mobilization for 2020:
We need to talk about the need to bring millions of workers into the streets for Earth Day on April 22,
2020. But we need to have a continuous series of actions, as was just done this past week, until eight
days later, which is May Day 2020, which is the true workers and trade unions holiday. A week of
activity between the “bookends” of Earth Day and May Day could be a wonderful opportunity to bring
the labor and environmental movements together in a way we haven’t seen before.

Conference Organization and Support
The conference was organized by Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED), with support from
Rosa Luxemburg Foundation—New York Office, and CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies (SLU).
The conference was also organized in partnership with: National Nurses United (NNU), New York
State Nurses Association (NYSNA), United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE),
Canadian Union of Public Employees, National Union of Public and General Employees (Canada),
Transnational Institute, The Democracy Collaborative, Science for the People, DSA’s Ecosocialist
Working Group, #NationalizeGrid, Our Public Power (New York) and New York Communities for
Change.

A Note on the Conference Proceedings
The proceedings captured in the following pages are distilled from many hours of sometimes very
detailed presentations and intensive discussion. We have not attempted to provide a precise
transcript, but to convey all of the main substance and key points of the many contributions from
presenters—contributions that were variously informative, challenging, sobering, encouraging and
inspiring.
Video recordings of the day are available online:
• Morning sessions (Note: Program begins around 10:15):
https://www.facebook.com/MurphyInstituteCUNY/videos/415055105866278/
• Afternoon sessions (Note: First contribution by SAFTU’s Secretary General Zwelinzima Vavi is
truncated; see link below for full video):
https://www.facebook.com/MurphyInstituteCUNY/videos/2769709256373293/
• Zwelinzima Vavi’s special presentation (complete):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi9YYmHeQvQ

Acknowledgements
In addition to the people and organizations named above, and all of the conference presenters and
participants, the TUED team would like to extend sincere gratitude to all those who helped make the
conference both possible and a resounding success:
CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies (SLU)
Paula Finn
Michael Andrade Lalan
Aaron Lenchner
Nadhia Rahman
Rosa Luxemburg Foundation—New York Office
Andreas Guenther
Aaron Eisenberg
Maresi Starzmann
CUNY SLU Student Volunteers
Neonne Ameer
Allison Blanchette
Interpretation
Colectivo Babilla
Lala Peñaranda
NY Communities for Change (for interpretation equipment)
Food
Khao'na Kitchen: https://www.khaonakitchen.com/
Reception
The Democracy Collaborative