Public power in Europe
Since 2018, TNI has supported municipalities across Europe to connect and learn from each other and increase their capacities and confidence to promote public power. As a result of mPower, a joint project with allied universities and organisations, more than one hundred local authorities and entities in Europe developed city-wide climate plans and reached their sustainable energy targets. Some fifty localities created new community energy projects or implemented new policies to support such projects. In the reports Building Public Power and Making Municipal Power Work, TNI shared important insights from the project, which came to a close this year, and laid out a municipal agenda for best practice to achieve fair, clean and democratic energy futures across Europe.
Just transition in North Africa
One of the take-aways of the mPower project was the value of collaboration with workers and users, who have a unique vantage point through which the effectiveness, fairness and everyday functioning of the energy system can be seen. In 2022, TNI played a crucial role in linking people and movements, from different contexts, with diverse interests and ideological positions, to build a broad movement for energy democracy. Together with Working Group for Energy Democracy in Tunisia, we co-organised the country’s first-ever Energy Democracy Conference. This brought together representatives of trade unions and civil society organisations to exchange and learn about issues of energy privatisation, green extractivism, and corporatised renewable energy, as well as to identify opportunities to organise and push for democratic public energy. A joint report, Towards a just energy transition in Tunisia, described the local and global context, and pointed the way forward. Published in Arabic, French and English, the report inspired an OpEd in Africa Is A Country. A public launch attracted 50 people and reached another 3,000 through TNI’s social media channels.
A new collection of essays, Just Transition(s) in North Africa, centred the voices of activists, scholars and writers from North Africa and the Arab region. Published in both Arabic and English, the collection examined diverse threats of energy colonialism and green extractivism. The publication, which was picked up by a number of media outlets, helped shape the public discussion on energy in North Africa, and pushed social and environmental justice perspectives to the fore. TNI also supported and engaged in key regional spaces for dialogue and learning, including a summer school in Tunisia involving some 30 representatives of social movements, and a climate camp, organised by Greenpeace MENA, involving some 400 young people. Both events served to build solidarity among different movements in North Africa and beyond. A new primer helped orient readers to the historical and economic causes of climate change, and the key principles of a just transition.
The future is public
On the global level, the movement for public ownership of energy and other public goods continues to flourish. In partnership with the Open University of Recoleta, based in Chile, we launched an exciting new International Diploma on Transformative Local Governments. Three thousand students attended the programme’s four five-week long courses. With their diplomas in hand, participants reported being better equipped with the theoretical and practical tools to implement transformative processes in their local contexts. The Shifting Narratives conference, co-hosted by TNI and led by Public Services International Research Group and the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose of University College London, helped to further develop impactful narratives around public service spending and provision, and strengthen alliances between activist scholars, trade unions and other civil society groups. Meanwhile, our Transformative Cities Award, which puts a spotlight on inspiring, community-driven initiatives on energy, water, energy, housing and food systems, continues to grow. Not only did we see a record number of cases submitted (the vast majority from Asia, Africa and Latin America), but 16,000 people voted on the Award, a 50% increase from last year.
Our movement-building work reached an apex in November when over 1,000 people from more than 100 countries converged in Chile for ‘Our Future is Public Conference’, co-organised by TNI and allies. Before and during the conference, we played a leading role in laying the basis for a larger, stronger and more diverse international alliance working for democratic energy. Bridges were built between climate, labour, environmental, Indigenous and feminist movements, who brought different viewpoints and visions to the table, and took steps toward a more unified narrative on democratic public ownership. In the run-up to the conference, TNI produced a plethora of publications, including documentation of nearly two decades of work on public alternatives, and new case studies on energy democracy and successful coalition-building in Colombia and the Philippines. Key actors are hearing our message: in a new report, the International Renewable Energy Association, the lead global intergovernmental agency for energy transformation, explicitly acknowledged problems with privatisation of energy services and recognised TNI’s work on democratic ownership of public services.
