Julian Skidmore, Senior Software Engineer, Versinetic
The current energy crisis can be viewed, at a simple level, as the conflict between energy access (which is largely democratised, at least for billions of people around the world), and that of energy generation, which has had in recent years, relatively few providers.
As an electric vehicle charging consultancy, we are interested to see how this conflict will play out, particularly as we move towards green energy sources and the increasing the number of electric vehicles on roads, endorsed by government policy in many countries. This article examines the factors that currently present opportunities for energy democratisation including rising oil and gas prices and the falling cost of renewable energy and what it could mean for the ownership of energy storage and production.
Time to explore energy democracy?
Energy democracy is the concept whereby the generation and management of energy is placed into the hands of the general population. The low volume of companies producing energy at this time engenders an opportune opening for the democratisation of energy, particularly as there is a global shift towards renewable energy sources. Redistributing the production and management of energy could include: socially-owned energy infrastructure; the movement away from centralised energy systems and increasing public inclusion and participation when it comes to energy-related policymaking.
Energy democratisation is arguably an additional favourable outcome of tackling the challenges of decarbonisation. Here, the movement towards renewables can simultaneously be a pathway to balancing political and economic power with social ends, something that is endorsed by NGOs, think tanks and community organisations alike. To explore why social ownership of energy storage and generation could help, we must first examine the growing global energy crisis.
Oil & gas and ever-rising fuel bills
In recent years, and particularly since 2008, there has been an ongoing fuel crisis in the UK and the world at large. Oil prices increased sharply from 2002 (£16.18/barrel) to 2008 (£119/barrel). There was some stability at around £81/barrel from 2012 to 2014, with additional smaller peaks in 2018 and 2021.
Again, a further crisis unravelled when gas prices in the EU and the UK rose from about €17/MWh in June 2021 to a peak of £150/MWh in late 2021, before falling to around £60/MWh at the time of writing.
However, while the price of fossil fuels continues to rise, we can observe the falling costs of solar and wind power production.
Renewable energy prices falling
As renewable fuel sources, solar and wind power have added benefits. They can be both produced on a small scale domestically as well as generated on a larger, industrial scale. What’s more, the prices of renewables are falling. Currently, solar will be about £0.23/W, which over a 20-year lifetime for a set of solar panels represents about $18/MWh, i.e., cheaper than the long-term gas prices over the last 10 years.
Similarly, wind energy averaged £41/MWh in 2019 and could be as low as £24/MWh, now in the same ball-park as the long-term average price for gas.
Although the production of green energy is intermittent over short time periods, it delivers increasingly cheap, accessible and reliable energy over longer periods. This has led to it out-competing fossil fuels and delivering ownership to more people, thus increasing energy security.
The cost of green fuel sources, coupled with the movement towards decarbonisation has accelerated the movement of electrification and electric vehicles on the roads. As more fuel-combusting cars continue to be replaced by EVs, EV owners will want the convenience of their own charging points at home. With renewable energy, particular solar power, a viable option for homeowners looking to reduce their household energy bills, we could see an uptake in household production of electricity to balance out an over reliance on national energy suppliers and further reduce household bills in the longer term. This, coupled with a societal trend towards self-reliance and leading “off the grid” lifestyles could further swing the pendulum towards energy democratisation.
Energy disruption – conflict & extreme weather
Renewable energy provides greater energy security compared to fossil fuels when we consider energy conflicts and weather extremes.
For example, at least three major pipelines flow through Ukraine to European countries. Therefore, both Russia and Europe have a vested interest to maintain pipeline security while it’s in Europe’s interest to reduce this dependency, with new plans to completely eliminate it by 2027. Conversely, Russia’s economic interests are to maintain external dependency, whilst reducing dependency on Ukraine.
Globally, climate change, leading to increased unpredictable weather patterns should be factored in. In the UK, even in the past month, have led to power failure. Distributed energy generation at every level increases energy security by allowing more graceful grid failure.
The historical arc of energy generation
A very crude historical analysis suggests that, energy production and use was both local and distributed. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, energy production was derived from growing crops (solar, chemical); rivers driving mills; wind driving sailing ships or by burning wood or dung for heating and cooking.
Energy storage took the form of human or animal energy storage. Both were put to work, transferring solar and chemical energy to kinetic energy. As a first approximation, we can argue that energy production and use has always been a de-facto human right and necessity.
The industrial revolution and with it, the economics of fossil fuel usage, altered this and made it possible to extract and use more power than that which was generated by manual labour. Higher development costs consequently placed energy production into the hands of fewer people. Essentially, mechanisation and the energy density of fossil fuels overtook everything else.
On the other hand, the limitations of mechanisation in the Industrial Revolution led to the mass culture of the 20th century; while the introduction of personal, mechanised transport and electricity started to return energy access to the population.
Energy democracy
It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the centralised energy generation models designed for the 20th century are not suitable for the 21st, particularly as we enter a phase of decarbonisation.
The trends towards increased electrification, such as Electric Vehicles, and the emerging markets for electricity, particularly in developing countries clearly demonstrate this.
In the same way that computer technology since the 1980s and through into the 2020s has given a large proportion of the global population the opportunity (in theory) to communicate, broadcast and affect society globally, we should expect a similar process with regard to energy itself for similar reasons.
With ubiquity, the costs of computing technology have come down to provide accessibility for large swathes of the population. This is partly because of the technology itself (e.g., mobile computing has galvanised R&D in battery technology), but also because of our growing awareness of the changes we need to make now to equip us in the decades to come.
Energy generation and storage are following a similar path. Whether that’s at the individual, community, corporate, municipal or national level, democratisation is starting to drive changes in society as profound as anything else over the past 40 years. Energy democratisation is arguably both the most likely and desirable outcome of energy shifts in the 21st century; beneficial from a social justice viewpoint, but also in alleviating the current energy crisis.
The model is closer to the historical norm than the domination of energy generation by large-scale industry. Therefore, it is the most likely stable configuration from a viewpoint of energy security, given the increasingly erratic fuel crises effects of climate change in the 21st century. It’s also the easiest means by which our global community can access energy supplies.
As we pass through another year of global tensions and uncertainty, it is likely it will only fast-forward the move towards democratising energy, in the same sense that the COVID-19 pandemic has also served to accelerate technological transformation.
Julian Skidmore is a Senior Software Engineer at Versinetic, working on EV charging and V2G projects, and has co-authored EV-related articles for the electronics industry press. He has a Computer Science degree from UEA and an MPhil in Computer Architecture from Manchester University as well as over 20 years’ experience in embedded development.
Julian is a proponent of the zero-carbon society and a Guardian News ‘climate hero’. He has owned a Battery EV for over four years; has investments in wind farm cooperatives and has a 4KW domestic Solar PV installation.
