What if our understanding of capitalism and climate is back to front? What if the problem is not capitalist profiteering from the energy transition, but that saving the planet is not profitable enough?
This is Brett Christophers’ claim. The global economy is greening slower than required because the return on green investment is too low.
Today’s consensus is that the key to curbing climate change is to green electricity and electrify everything possible. The consensus is also that the main economic barrier to clean electricity has been removed. With the price of solar and wind-power having tumbled, we are poised, say boosterists, for a golden renewables era.
But the boosterists are wrong. What drives investment is profit, not price, and operating solar and wind farms remains a marginal business, dependent everywhere on the state’s financial support.
Our predicament? We are expecting markets and the private sector to solve the climate crisis, yet the profits that are their lifeblood are elusive.
The answer is not to continue to cobble together green profit through subsidy. It is to take energy out of the private sector’s hands.
An essential intervention, The Price is Wrong is as politically far-reaching as it is factually illuminating.
