Version imprimableIntroduction
In this sense, it’s worth noting that the energy system is at a historic crossroads. Climatic crisis, geopolitical fragility, and resource scarcity force us to rethink how we produce, distribute, and consume energy. In this context, expanding energy capacity based on renewable energy appears to be a crucial opportunity.
But not just any deployment will do: many reproduce the logic of the fossil fuel system they claim to replace, because the current energy transition model is being led by large private companies, with profitability as their objective. A private oligopoly, which has penetrated and monopolised all sources and technologies, including renewables, is protected by the State and an artificial marginal pricing system that guarantees profit for the most profitable sector of the Spanish economy. In the face of this inertia, it is urgent to defend a fair, democratic, and planned eco-social transition that puts life and collective well-being at the center.
How does the electrical system work?
The electrical system, which is merely one of the secondary sources of energy we receive—accounting for only 24% of the total, while the rest are fossil fuels used for mobility or heating—requires a complex infrastructure that allows the electricity generated to reach consumption points instantly, continuously, and safely. To understand its current challenges and the decisions involved in its transformation, it is important to understand its key elements and how they interact with each other.
The electrical system is made up of four major phases:
1. Generation: Electricity production in power plants (thermal, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind, etc.)
2. Transmission: High-voltage transportation of electricity over long distances through a network of transmission lines.
3. Distribution: Distribution of medium- and low-voltage electricity to homes, businesses, and services.
4. Consumption: Final use of electrical energy by domestic, industrial, or public users.
The centralised electricity system requires that generation and consumption be balanced at all times. This requires continuous, usually automated, technical control to adjust supply to actual demand, and generation to consumption, second by second. Meeting this requirement requires not only adequate supervision and coordination, but also a combination of very diverse technologies with distinctive characteristics, some of which are more difficult to manage when they are the majority, as is the case with renewables, within the generation that contributes to the electrical grid system.
Power generation technologies: characteristics
In summary, the characteristics of the main current technologies are as follows:
1. Fossil thermal power plants (gas, coal, fuel oil)
Their advantage is that they contribute to the management of the current centralised electrical grid system and can be switched on or off based on demand. They also have high installed capacity and inertia, a characteristic that provides stability to the system.
However, they are highly polluting, emitting large amounts of CO₂ and other gases, not to mention the external dependence caused by reliance on imported sources, their volatility subject to geopolitics, and other severe environmental and health risks.
2. Nuclear Power Plants
This technology is often credited with continuous production and its contribution to grid stability due to its inertia. But it must be kept in mind that this continuity is not an advantage, but rather a sign of inflexibility, because although power plants can be shut down if necessary, restarting them is very slow and highly costly. Having to produce continuously is exactly the opposite of what a centralised power grid system requires. Nuclear lobbies try to promote their technology, using the mantra of stability, but accepting this means limiting the system and other energy sources.
It is also true that they do not emit CO₂ directly, but their high investment costs, which make them unprofitable (even though their operating costs are low), their limited lifespan of just a few decades (and the resulting costs of dismantling and reinvestment), the geological timescale management of radioactive waste (no drum can withstand corrosion for more than a century), and the risks (despite safety improvements) that in the long term turn the improbable into a certain danger, as Ulrich Beck could say, without forgetting the expenditure of cooling water they require, make them completely unsuitable for the medium and long-term ecological transition process.
3. Renewable energy
Renewable energy represents the alternative, but it is not without its limitations.
First, the centralised electricity grid system is poorly suited to renewable energy.
Wind power is clean. Solar photovoltaic is also clean, and it is modular and easy to install. Both have low operating costs. But both are intermittent, more difficult to manage, require a large available surface area, and don’t generate inertia with the current technological model. To increase compatibility with the current system in a stable environment, they require accumulation or backup solutions, which are currently insufficient. In countries with high water availability, such as Scandinavia, hydroelectric plants work well, but in others with recurrent droughts, such as ours, the alternative is batteries. These are also expensive, both in terms of money and critical materials (lithium, cobalt, nickel)—with their resulting ecological footprint—while hydrogen is inefficient as a battery and its uses will be limited.
The more intermittent renewable energies are integrated, the greater the technical complexity of the electricity grid. Therefore, alongside renewable generation, it is essential to promote a decentralised and distributed model, prioritising self-consumption in energy communities, which reduces pressure on the central grid, and to implement demand management policies, encouraging consumption during peak production times. In this regard, some things can already be done. While the electricity grid system requires synchronisation between generation and consumption, what’s the point of having the most expensive consumption periods in spring and summer during daylight hours? The point is to make consumption cheaper during the sunniest hours of the day during these months.
What’s going wrong with the current expansion of renewables?
Far from being a comprehensive alternative to the fossil fuel system, the current deployment of renewable energy is guided by market criteria, not by social or ecological needs. Private companies invest haphazardly, prioritising areas where grid connection is more accessible and profitable or where there is greater consumption capacity, without considering the impact on the land and the conflict with the needs of rural communities, which are often located near those same connection points.
This logic of extractive renewables does not necessarily reduce the use of non-renewable sources: in many cases, it simply adds to them, keeping fossil and nuclear systems active as long as they continue to generate profits. Furthermore, the centralisation of the system—replicating the fossil model—with mega-solar and wind installations, and a centralised electricity grid that requires a high percentage of dirty energy to be stable, often conflicts with rural populations, traditional agricultural uses, and biodiversity.
Instead of moving toward reducing consumption and reorganising the energy model, a productivist model is being reproduced that clashes head-on with the planet’s ecological limits.
Towards a fair and sustainable energy model
Energy is an essential common good and, as such, must be managed through public planning and democratic community participation, not as a niche business. It is essential that public authorities regain the initiative in the design of the energy system, moving toward a model that combines:
• Renewables as the primary source, progressively reducing and replacing fossil and nuclear energy sources
• Decentralised and community-based distribution, with self-consumption systems, local grids, and energy storage adapted to each territory.
• Collaboration with rural and urban communities, integrating social, environmental, and landscape criteria in the selection of locations and management models.
• Democratic participation in energy decisions, recognising energy as a right and not a commodity.
This model requires sustained public investment, not only in production infrastructure, but also in smart distribution networks, storage, energy efficiency, and technical and civic education. Public investment cannot be limited to infrastructure from which private companies ultimately reap meager profits, but rather to society as a whole. For example, the mass leasing of batteries and storage systems, while it may contribute to stabilising the electricity grid, also entails lowering costs for private companies that should have assumed such investment. If the public sector leases batteries on a large scale, it would also be appropriate for the entire system to be public, socialising this strategic sector. The cost, without a doubt, although high, would be 5% less than defense spending will entail between now and 2030. It would undoubtedly be a much better option.
Now, this exercise in socialisation is not enough. It must include planning for the redeployment of infrastructure and technology in other terms. Based on renewable energy, and only in a minority and instrumental way with gas for emergency situations, it must replace other technologies and sources, deploy a distributed and decentralised model, and adapt the sources to be used according to the land, democratically agreeing with each community on the location of the facilities. Likewise, it seems essential that the reorganisation and redeployment of infrastructure be carried out in a transition that, with the help of research, development and innovations so that infrastructure is increasingly supported by low-tech technologies (which some call modest and others light) not dependent on the fossil industry, and capable of minimising the use of materials, energy and expanding the logic of a spiral economy. This would allow reintegrating materials into the cycle of nature to the extent possible — knowing how stubborn thermodynamics is in this regard, and as the expert José Manuel Naredo often points out— while providing a sufficient service to the entire population.
Energy sovereignty and the environment
In a world increasingly under pressure for resource control, energy self-sufficiency is becoming a key element of sovereignty. The Iberian Peninsula, and especially its southern counterparts, has enormous potential to cover a large part of its demand with renewables. But this requires a change of model: simply changing sources is not enough if the power relations that structure the system are not transformed.
True energy sovereignty involves collectively deciding what energy is produced, how, where, for whom, and with what impacts. It requires recognising that energy is not neutral, that unequal access to it shapes all aspects of life, and that any transformation must be accompanied by territorial and social justice, starting with including the eradication of energy poverty on the agenda, guaranteeing basic energy supplies for the entire population, and addressing the limits of our biosphere.
This justice also entails, as we have indicated, agreeing on the location of facilities based on criteria that do not displace the capacities and needs of agricultural production, the needs of rural municipalities, and that include technical adaptation of the required infrastructure. For example, developing bladeless wind turbines that transfer energy through vortex-induced vibration—since birds follow the same path as the wind they harness—or locating solar panel farms in parking lots, building rooftops, industrial areas, and rural areas with a lesser impact on populations, agriculture, and biodiversity.
Let’s also consider that we need to double these renewable-based infrastructures, not to add them to fossil and nuclear technologies, but rather to replace them for the most part.
Biophysical limits: the forgotten face of the transition
We cannot talk about energy transition without recognising the planet’s material limits. The electrification of the economy—necessary in many ways—cannot be seen as an unlimited growth in renewable generation. It seems necessary to further double the current installed capacity, provided that this is not done in a haphazard manner and based on market criteria, but rather in response to social, environmental, and technical needs and conditions. But we must be aware that this requires access to vast quantities of materials such as copper, lithium, and rare earths, whose availability is limited and whose life cycles pose formidable ecological challenges. It will also require continued scientific research and the development of infrastructure that can utilise other abundant materials, such as aluminium, which, although a poorer conductor than copper, could provide adequate service in certain activities.
Current renewable infrastructures depend indirectly on fossil fuels: in their extraction, manufacturing, transportation, and maintenance. Their useful life is limited, no more than 30 years; they must be remanufactured and also generate waste. Therefore, it is not enough to simply change energy sources: it is essential to transform the economic model toward a sober and fair economy that selects the energy demand to be met, avoiding conspicuous and unnecessary consumption, instead of trying to maintain the same level of consumption.
This implies:
• Promoting austere, efficient, and shared lifestyles and consumption patterns, which do not necessarily mean renouncing the meeting of needs linked to well-being and a dignified way of life.
• Committing to public, collective, and electrified mobility, prioritising rail and tram transportation, as well as buses and subways, and using electric cars in urban areas for essential services (taxi, ambulance, fire brigade) and developing municipal shared-hire transportation systems to reach rural areas without other coverage.
• Prioritising energy use to cover basic needs and activities of high social value.
What economic policy for what energy model?
A sustainable energy transition requires an economic policy that serves the common good. It’s not just about changing the energy mix, but about building a different development model. A model that doesn’t seek unlimited growth, but rather balances natural limits and social equity.
This requires:
• Long-term public planning, based on technical, social, and ecological criteria.
• Negotiation and democratic participation of communities in strategic decisions.
• Restructuring employment and vocational training toward sustainable sectors.
• Decentralisation of generation and distribution systems, maintaining coordination between systems so that diversification becomes a virtue that does not renounce the potential synergies between the different formulas found.
Faced with this prospect, global economic and political elites appear to have opted for a different path: an authoritarian and antisocial transition based on the control of strategic resources, extractivism, the increasing use of force, inequality, and exclusion. It’s a model where fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and large centralised renewables coexist in an increasingly unstable, extractive, and militarised system. A model that shields itself from protest, curtails rights, and consolidates the privileges of a few.
This course of action is not only socially unjust, but also ecologically unviable and politically unsustainable. It clashes with the interests of the social majority, especially the working classes and the peoples of the Global South, and blocks any possibility of a real transition toward a livable future.
The energy model is not merely a technical matter: it is profoundly political. It determines what kind of life is possible and for whom. Therefore, the struggle for a new energy system is also a struggle for democracy, justice, and a dignified life. At the same time, the electricity system is not just a technical framework: it is also a field of political, social, and ecological decisions. Each technology has its conditions, advantages, and limitations, and none—not even renewables—is free from impacts. Therefore, a just energy transition requires not only more renewables, but also conscious democratic planning, from the public and community levels, where socially necessary uses are prioritised, impacts are minimised, and energy power is distributed more democratically.
Avoiding future blackouts doesn’t depend solely on installing more panels or more wind turbines, but on fundamentally rethinking our way of living, producing, and organising ourselves. We need a public, democratic, sufficient, sustainable, and fair model. And we need to develop it now, given that the current one is increasingly insecure and dangerous.
6 June 2025
Translated by David Fagan for International Viewpoint from vientosur.
