How a low-carbon transition could drive a shift to energy democracy

Julie MacArthur grew up on the move. Every two or three years when she was a child, her family would pick up and change towns or countries or continents in pursuit of a new place to live and new people to help

Joni and Ed MacArthur, her parents, were teachers, and their travels took the family to Nass Valley and Lillooet in BC, to Tanzania in East Africa, and many other stops. They worked in a variety of fields, from adult education to alternative school programs, from prison literacy to international development.

MacArthur, an associate professor and the Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Reimagining Capitalism at Royal Roads University, took advantage of plenty of opportunities for travel and learning herself. She spent three months in Japan as a high school student. Between her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, she taught English to both children and businesspeople in Korea. And the seven years prior to her return to BC and arrival at RRU in 2021, the internationally recognized scholar of energy democracy and the politics of low-carbon transitions held lecturer and senior lecturer positions at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

It’s not just her itinerant adulthood that she credits to her parents’ example, but also to her research focus.

“It’s a mix of chance,” she says, “and my parents instilling, through my whole upbringing, the importance of paying attention to the voices of people who aren’t in power.”

Power to the powerless, and to fight the climate crisis

Julie MacArthur, who is also a resident fellow specializing in energy systems at the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads, is focused on power. Not just how we make it but who makes it — and, as importantly, who has it.

And how each of those things can — and should — change.

Thus, her CRC in reimaging capitalism — “a system [that] touches every aspect of our lives” — and her focus on energy democracy, especially as it relates to mitigating the climate crisis.

“How do we address climate change in a system that rewards short-termism and extracting the maximum from workers and the planet and the biosphere?” says MacArthur, who has a PhD in Political Science from SFU, a Master of Arts in Asia Pacific Policy Studies from UBC and a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) in Applied Studies, with specializations in International Trade and Peace and Conflict Studies, from the University of Waterloo.

“Energy democracy is related to the broader idea of economic democracy, which highlights the importance of transferring economic decision making and power to workers, citizens and communities rather than having it concentrated in elites who aren’t local,” she says.

Diversity and democratization in energy and climate action widen our base of innovative solutions, and increase the likelihood we’ll ask the right questions and choose effective, rather than just symbolic, answers.

“Paying attention to the voices of people who aren’t in power” is essential to energy democracy, to ensure that low-carbon energy isn’t being imposed, top-down, from the same cadre of multi-billion-dollar electricity utilities that built and maintain current power supplies. Traditionally under-represented people and communities must have a more meaningful role in deciding how power systems are designed and how the benefits get distributed, MacArthur says, noting that when they do, we get more effective projects, fairer energy systems and better policies.

She gives as an example a project in Brixton, in London, U.K.: Several organizations partnered to install solar cell arrays on the roofs of social housing buildings. Those same groups trained young people from the buildings to maintain the panels themselves, then to travel to other areas and give talks about the technology.

“Think of all the different kinds of co-benefits being generated here,” MacArthur says — she points to youth empowerment, renewable energy, public education — “You’re seeing social innovation alongside technical innovation.”

Cooperation and consultation are key for energy projects

Consent was key in the Brixton project. Rather than having the solar panels installed without consultation, with residents receiving flyers about something that was already decided, the organizations that were involved went door to door to get residents’ buy-in and support.

“The bigger issue is do people, when they’re on the receiving end of information, believe what they’re hearing?” MacArthur says. “Do people trust the actors who are making decisions for them? That trust has been eroded in many cases… but that trust is essential to getting enough people on board to change their behaviour.”

And trust — as much as science, as much as technological advancement, as much as political leadership — is crucial, she says, pointing to the pandemic as an example.

“If we’re going to have significant action on climate change that isn’t going to lead to what we’ve seen with COVID,” she says, referencing the erosion in trust among some in scientific leaders and experts, in government leaders and official channels, “we need people to be in communities, going door to door, and talking to their neighbours about what really matters to them.”

“It’s about the need to feel listened to and have decent jobs and have their families thriving — things most people want.

“It takes years to build trust,” she notes, “and rightly so, which is why there is so much promise in community-based organizations and non-profits.”

The flip side of that is mistrust is also built over years and, in the case of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, generations. The history of relations between government and corporate power and First Nations is an example of how not to engage: top-down and with consultation often just a public relations exercise, she says.

“We need to learn from how poorly consultations and shoving policies down people’s throats goes in the long run. It creates deep wounds and we want to make sure we do it better because the stakes are so high and it’s the right thing to do.”

Examples of energy projects around the world

Doing the right thing for the coming green energy transition could involve any number of technologies and governance models.

“In the UK, there’s a large and diverse community energy sector, including activities like community solar gardens, electrical vehicle sharing or non-profit charging infrastructure, provided at low or no cost,” she said in a previous RRU article. “The community energy sector is really snowballing as more of them develop and, crucially, the core purpose is not profit, but meeting human needs.”

The community-public sector partnership model has proved one of the most effective worldwide to build transformative projects. In her previous home of New Zealand, for instance, MacArthur says some of the world’s largest geothermal projects are significantly Māori owned, with returns flowing back into community development and youth scholarships, while in Denmark, the Middelgrunden offshore wind farm, which boasts 20 turbines and delivers about four per cent of Copenhagen’s electricity, was built by a community co-operative partnership with the public municipal utility. 

“Not every innovation works everywhere. And there’s so much more possible here in BC and across Canada,” she adds noting, “What’s possible in a given context changes based on the current circumstances, ideas in public discourse and how they’re articulated.”

In her CRC work at Royal Roads, MacArthur, who is a past chair of the international Women and Inclusivity in Sustainable Energy Research Network, hopes to help pave the way for initiatives like a national citizens’ forum on energy policy. The focus, she says, is looking at different models and how those models address a low-carbon energy transition.

“Diversity and democratization in energy and climate action widen our base of innovative solutions,” she says, “and increase the likelihood we’ll ask the right questions and choose effective, rather than just symbolic, answers.”

Dr. Julie MacArthur is the author of Empowering Electricity: Co-operatives, Sustainability and Power Sector Reform in Canada, as well more than 30 articles and book chapters on energy democracy, participatory environmental governance and comparative energy policy. She also co-edited and contributed to Environmental Politics and Policy in Aotearoa New Zealand with Maria Bargh, associate professor of Māori studies at Victoria University of Wellington and is the co-editor (with Laura Tozer, Jenny Lieu and Cheryl Teelucksingh) of the forthcoming Justice in Canada’s Energy Transition.