This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

Much has been written about Germany’s renewable energy transition—particularly the speed at which it is being achieved, as well as the ambition of its future targets (the country is aiming for 55–60 percent renewables by 2035).6 The weaknesses of the program have also been hotly debated, particularly the question of whether the decision to phase out nuclear energy has led to a resurgence of coal (more on that next chapter). In all of this analysis, however, scarce attention has been paid to one key factor that has made possible what may be the world’s most rapid shift to wind and solar power: the fact that in hundreds of cities and towns across the country, citizens have voted to take their energy grids back from the private corporations that purchased them. As Anna Leidreiter, a climate campaigner with the World Future Council, observed after the Hamburg vote, “This marks a clear reversal to the neoliberal policies of the 1990s, when large numbers of German municipalities sold their public services to large corporations as money was needed to prop up city budgets.”7 Nor is this some small trend. According to a Bloomberg report, “More than 70 new municipal utilities have started up since 2007, and public operators have taken over more than 200 concessions to run energy grids from private companies in that time.” And though there are no national statistics, the German Association of Local Utilities believes many more cities and towns than that have taken back control over t...

Public power grid with 100% renewable energy