Local Energy Supplies and Recommunalization of Utility Providers

Privatization of utility companies and provision of basic services via Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) has been the conventional wisdom of a liberal dogma that reigned supreme from the 1980s until the global financial crisis in 2008. Private providers would run municipal enterprises more efficiently and their privatization would free capital for other purposes, so the argument went.  

Critics have pointed to negative consequences of such privatizations: often the new owners hiked prices and contributed to energy poverty. Urban communities on the other hand were deprived of the ability to actively shape local energy policies and introduce social and environmental consideration into local energy politics. 

Such criticism has led to initiatives for improved schemes of local energy provision, ranging from changed ownership structures, modified private-public partnerships to prevention or reversal privatization of communal energy providers. In Hamburg a successful local referendum was launched in 2016 on the recommunalization of the local provider for electricity, natural gas and long-distance heating. Other German cities have seen similar initiatives, for example Berlin. Montevideo has actively sought to increase the renewable energy share in its energy provision and the Palestinian city of Hebron has a municipal company for energy provision, HEPCo, that faces challenges and opportunities in its specific local context. Barcelona has launched its own municipal energy company, Barcelona Energy in 2018, a public metropolitan electricity operator that will supply renewable electricity to the City Council and other municipal companies, as well as street lighting. Among its state goals is “having an active role in the energy market to make it more fair, efficient and sustainable”.  

This seminar will gather practitioners, civil society and academics to discuss merits and challenges of such initiatives and similarities and differences between them.