QUESTIONS: What are the political issues influencing the past, current and future of the energy system? What political ideologies underpin different approaches to the system? This section explores some of the political ideologies and approaches to the energy system, and discusses some of the values, worldviews and framing that are behind this guide. Mainstream and CONTINUE READING
Governance and decision making
QUESTIONS FOR ENERGY DEMOCRACY: How different can the rules of the energy system be? What rules currently govern the technical management, ownership and value flows in the system? How did it come to be this way? Who has the power to change the rules and how? Governance of the energy system is defined as ‘the CONTINUE READING
Money Flows
QUESTIONS: Where does money and value flow in the energy system? What needs to be paid for? How is this changing? How could this be done differently? How is the energy system financed? Who profits? In the 2015 general election, Ed Miliband promised to freeze energy bills. This may have been a vote-winner, but from CONTINUE READING
Organisations and ownership
QUESTIONS FOR ENERGY DEMOCRACY: Who owns the GB energy system? Why does ownership matter? What alternative forms of ownership are being developed and proposed? How can changes in ownership be achieved? Before going into detail on how the energy system is currently owned and could be owned, let’s think a bit more about what ownership CONTINUE READING
Energy storage and transportation infrastructure
Energy storage and transportation infrastructure Questions for energy democracy: How do we get energy from where it is available when it is available to where it is needed when it is needed? The GB energy system currently includes several energy transport infrastructures: gas and electricity networks, road networks for transporting liquid heating and transport fuels, CONTINUE READING
Energy capture infrastructure
QUESTIONS FOR ENERGY DEMOCRACY: Where do we get energy from, and how? What are the social and environmental implications of this? This section discusses: Primary energy The meaning of renewable and sustainable energy Technical considerations for energy generation Technologies for moving, storing and using energy are discussed in their own sections. Primary energy All of CONTINUE READING
Energy consumption infrastructure
QUESTIONS FOR ENERGY DEMOCRACY: How do we use energy, what for, in what form, and when? Why do we use it? Energy has an important social value, for directly and indirectly meeting our needs, and as one of the underlying sources of value in the economy. Energy is used to provide energy services – e.g. CONTINUE READING
Physical infrastructure
QUESTIONS FOR ENERGY DEMOCRACY: What physical energy infrastructure do we already have in GB? How does it work? How is it changing? What are the benefits and problems of our legacy infrastructure, as we integrate new technologies? What changes and what use of our historic legacy would be most beneficial for energy democracy? The GB CONTINUE READING
The physics of electricity
QUESTIONS FOR ENERGY DEMOCRACY: What are the characteristics of electricity systems which every energy system will need to take into account? Electricity is particularly important for a sustainable energy system, in fact sometimes when people say energy they are actually talking only about electricity. Electricity is very versatile, and renewable energy resources typically produce electricity CONTINUE READING
The physics of energy
QUESTIONS FOR ENERGY DEMOCRACY: What are the physical realities that any energy system needs to deal with, regardless of how we organise its rules, ownership, and goals? This guide aims to help us to re-imagine how our energy systems could be organised. To do that, we need to understand what is and isn’t changeable, starting CONTINUE READING
Social value of energy
Energy services and human needs Most people do not think about ‘using energy’ – we think about having a cup of tea, hoovering, using a drill, writing an email, having a shower. These are ‘energy services’. If we could get the same services using less energy, most people wouldn’t notice or care. Some say we CONTINUE READING
Introduction
There is a crucial role for citizens to shape the future of the GB energy system. Our current system is highly dependent on fossil fuels, leading to climate change and other negative social and environmental impacts. However, new technologies for energy systems have been developed since the 1970s in response to climate change, and out CONTINUE READING