Sean Sweeney is the director of the International Program on Labor, Climate & Environment at the School of Labor and Urban Studies, City University of New York. He also coordinates Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) a global network of 64 unions from 22 countries. TUED advocates for democratic control and social ownership of energy resources, infrastructure, and options.
The recent post-COP26 rollout of “just energy partnerships” to finance poor countries’ turn away from fossil fuels has been widely touted as a way for wealthy countries to fund the green transition. The only problem: they aren’t working.
The global oversupply of oil and gas before the pandemic, plus the massive slump in demand as a result of lockdown, has put the profitability of the sector in extreme crisis. The case for nationalizing energy production has never been stronger.