Electricity system operator re-nationalised!

13th September 2024 | News

Today the UK Government announced the establishment of the new publicly-owned National Energy System Operator (NESO) from Tuesday 1 October 2024, by acquiring assets from the privatised National Grid.

The new arms-length public body was actually created by the Conservative government under the Energy Act 2023, as it was finally acknowledged that the privatised system was completely incapable of the strategic planning necessary to deliver the clean energy transition at the pace required.

Under the new Labour government, NESO will work alongside the new publicly-owned energy generation company – Great British Energy – as part of a more strategic approach aiming to deliver clean power by 2030.

Labour commits to create new publicly-owned energy company

13th June 2024 | News

The Labour Party’s manifesto for the General Election on 4 July, commits to setting up Great British Energy – a new publicly-owned energy generation company. This forms one of their six ‘First Steps for Change‘ if elected. Below is an extract from the manifesto detailing their plans, so we can hold them to account.

Whilst this is a massive step in the right direction, which will see profits from offshore wind and other renewable energy generation returned to the public purse, Labour stop well short of renationalising the energy sector.

Of the big private energy supply companies, all they plan is “a much tougher system of regulation that puts consumers first” (p.54).

And although they recognise that the privatised National Grid “has become the single biggest obstacle to the deployment of cheap, clean power generation and the electrification of industry”, they make no commitments to bringing it back into public ownership, saying they “will work with industry to upgrade our national transmission infrastructure and rewire Britain” (p.55).

All we can hope is that once up-and-running, Great British Energy is a success and that it can then be expanded over the coming years to incorporate energy distribution and supply.

Extract from Labour Party Manifesto 2024:

Switch on Great British Energy

“To drive forward investment in clean, home-grown energy production, Labour will create a new publicly-owned company, Great British Energy. It will be owned by the British people and deliver power back to the British people.

Great British Energy will partner with industry and trade unions to deliver clean power by co-investing in leading technologies; will help support capital-intensive projects; and will deploy local energy production to benefit communities across the country. To support this, Labour will capitalise Great British Energy with £8.3 billion, over the next parliament.

The company will create jobs and build supply chains in every corner of the UK. Scotland will be the powerhouse of our clean energy mission, with Great British Energy headquartered there.

Local power generation is an essential part of the energy mix and reduces pressures on the transmission grid. Labour will deploy more distributed production capacity through our Local Power Plan. Great British Energy will partner with energy companies, local authorities, and co-operatives to install thousands of clean power projects, through a combination of onshore wind, solar, and hydropower projects. We will invite communities to come forward with projects, and work with local leaders and devolved governments to ensure local people benefit directly from this energy production.”

The case for public ownership of energy

8th October 2023 | Evidence / News

Common Wealth

Founded in 2019, Common Wealth is a new think tank dedicated to making the case for the public ownership of key services and infrastructure in order to address the challenges of our times: from rising inequalities to climate change.

Common Wealth has since written a number of excellent reports on the energy sector, including Power to the People: The Case for a Publicly Owned Generation Company and Grid is Good: The Case for Public Ownership of Transmission and Distribution.

Nationalise Bulb (don’t bail it out)

13th August 2022 | News / Petition

Private energy company Bulb collapsed in November 2021 and the government is planning on spending £2.2 billion to prop it up – the biggest state bailout since the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2008.

Apparently the government is “desperate to do a deal” to get Bulb back in the private sector – right now it’s considering giving a further £1 billion to private company Octopus to take over the company.

This makes no sense. Other countries like France, Germany, Italy and the US all have public suppliers of energy.

The government could take Bulb’s 1.7 million customers as the basis of a new publicly owned energy supply company.

Sign the petition

Report: Public Ownership of the UK Energy System

14th April 2016 | Evidence / News

Here is some brilliant new evidence to back up what we have been saying for the last three years!

A new report launched today by our friends at We Own It and written by David Hall, Professor at the Public Services International Research Unit at the University of Greenwich, shows that publicly owned energy would pay for itself in just ten years.

Implementing the plan, which combines national, regional and local public ownership of our energy generation, transmission, distribution and supply, would allow for savings of £3.2billion per year made possible by the lower cost of borrowing in the public sector, and an end to profiteering by shareholders.

Green MP Caroline Lucas says: “This report backs up what the majority of British people already think: a public energy system would be better for everyone. A publicly owned system would benefit from the low cost of borrowing, and – with no shareholders to pay – bills could be kept lower, permanently.”

Read the report

UK Energy

Power For The People supports Stop TTIP

14th April 2015 | News / Petition

Power For The People together with our ‘sister campaign’ Bring Back British Rail, is supporting the self-organised European Citizens’ Initiative against the controversial Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP).

TTIP threatens to make our aims of returning our essential services and infrastructure to public ownership far more difficult, by giving big corporations yet more power to sue the governments who finally wise-up to the injustices of privatisation and decide to take their assets back from the profiteers for the benefit of their citizens. Please sign the petition below before the deadline on 6 October 2015.

Public Ownership of Scotland’s Energy

20th September 2014 | News / Petition

Following the Referendum on Scottish Independence, Power For the People and its sister organisation Bring Back British Rail are launching two new campaigns for the Public Ownership of Scotland’s essential services and infrastructure with 38 Degrees:

Public Ownership of Scotland’s Energy
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/p/publicenergyscotland
Public Ownership of Scotland’s Railway
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/p/publicrailwayscotland

We intend to keep the pressure up and utilise the ‘new powers’ promised by the UK Government, to demand the radical changes to Scotland’s energy policy necessary to combat fuel poverty and meet the country’s ambitious 2050 climate change targets. In the run up to the next Scottish Parliamentary Elections on 5 May 2016, we shall demand that the Scottish Government reverses the injustices caused by Tory privatisation, boots out the big six and brings Scotland’s rich energy resources back under democratic public control.

Public Ownership in Scotland could be the ‘easy win’, which would pave the way for the other parts of the UK to follow suit.

The Public Ownership of Scotland’s Energy campaign is supported by:

Supporters
To add your organisation to this list, please email us at the address below.

People’s Climate March

15th September 2014 | Demonstration / News

People's Climate March

People’s Climate March London
Sunday 21 September 2014
Assemble 12:30
Temple Place

Join millions of people all over the world on the People’s Climate March this Sunday 21 September to demand that our world leaders at the UN Climate Summit take decisive action to tackle climate change.

Step one should be to ensure that all our carbon-intensive essential services and industries – such as our energy production and supply – are under democratic public control and not being milked by massive multi-national corporations to maximise private profit with no care for the consequences. Join us and shout Power For The People now!