Unsustainable Capitalism: The Politics of Renewable Energy in the UK

Abstract

In the final chapter of his influential book, The Future of the Market, Elmar Altvater seeks the genesis of a new kind of socialist project in a 're-moralization of resource allocation' which he thinks neither markets, nor the 'thin' democracy permitted by markets, allow. He concludes: '(t)oday the further evolution of society is possible only if the economic rationality of market procedures is firmly embedded in a complex system of social, non-market regulation of money and nature'. Energy must be central to such a project, but the systems properties of its fixed physical infrastructure exemplify the formidable obstacles it faces. For many good reasons nuclear energy is an unacceptable option; and if energy conservation (or so-called 'energy efficiency') is recognized as insufficient, we are left with renewable energy generation. It is from renewable energy that Altvater's alternative of a low impact, 'entropy-minimizing', democratically-regulated social infrastructure might be developed. Any alternative must start from where we are now. This essay describes how the market-driven politics of energy in the UK (whose economy is now powered by coal, oil, gas and nuclear energy) are blocking the development of renewable energy, which has physical and technological properties consistent with new, lower-waste forms of capitalism and also with a sustainable socialist economy.