# Who Will Control Energy in the Twenty-First Century? **Date de l'événement :** 01/11/2025 * Publié le 01/11/2025 ### Date 01/11/2025 ## Chapô **The history of energy regimes over the past two centuries teaches us that the mode of ownership – private, public or cooperative – of energy production and use is a political choice that is anything but neutral with regard to social inequalities. At a time of climate change with cataclysmic effects, the urgent question is who, between the tech giants and China, will control the global energy system in the twenty-first century, and how will this impact redistribution of wealth.** ## Corps du texte In 2023, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, inaugurated the construction site of a nuclear power plant built by TerraPower, a company he co-founded. The following year, Microsoft invested in a nuclear reactor, and Amazon, Google and Meta followed suit to power their energy-hungry artificial intelligence (AI) models. These companies announced that the low-carbon electricity produced by the reactors will be fed back into the grid, benefiting users and the planet. However, thus far in the United States, the increase in demand associated with AI needs has caused electricity prices for users to rise by nearly 20 per cent. These icons of contemporary capitalism are not alone in implementing a vision of the energy transition that is neither particularly fair nor particularly resource-efficient. In 2024, China produced nearly 85 per cent of the world’s solar panels. China also processed around 85 per cent of lithium, an essential raw material for electric batteries. For more than two decades, the Chinese government has been acting as the orchestrator of a large market combining planning and competition, where preferential loans, subsidies and the entire urban organisation serve the new titans of renewable energy. For the Chinese government, the challenge is as much about decarbonising the economy as it is about controlling global production chains for these energy and transition technologies. At a time when the world is being called upon to radically transform its energy system or suffer the effects of cataclysmic climate change, one question arises: who will own the global energy system in the twenty-first century, and how will this impact inequalities between and within countries? The investigation on which I base my book _Énergie et Inégalités: Une histoire politique_ (_Energy and Inequality: A Political History_, forthcoming) attempts to answer this question by examining the complex links between energy, emancipation and the concentration of power over time. Let's rewind. In 1775, a key figure in the history of energy, Matthew Boulton (1728–1809), invested in a project he considered revolutionary. To this end, he joined forces with a brilliant engineer whose company was on the verge of bankruptcy – a certain James Watt. The two men developed the first steam engines, the Watt-Boulton engines, which would spur a global technical revolution. To one of the visitors to their brand-new factory, Boulton declared: ‘I sell here, sir, what the whole world desires: power.’ The entrepreneur played on the double meaning of the word: the mechanical power produced by the piston of the steam engine, and the associated economic and political power. Understanding energy as a social and political issue ------------------------------------------------------- Boulton's words remain as relevant today as ever. The choices that must be made over the coming decades concern not only technologies, energy sources and uses, but also the modes of ownership and control of these assets. Between an energy system designed and controlled by a few tech giants and their owners, versus one managed by Chinese Communist Party officials, what energy ownership paths are possible for Europe and the rest of the world in the twenty-first century? Several studies have focused on the history of energy, but until now, the question of its ownership and control had not been addressed systematically over the long term. Drawing on the latest research in economic history and energy sciences, and based on previously unpublished data sets on energy system ownership, Energy and Inequality traces the material and political evolution of energy regimes in different regions of the world over the past two centuries, in order to better understand how energy and wealth and power inequalities interact. Without attempting to summarise the long history of the relationship between energy and human societies, the book underscores three key lessons that emerge from the dynamics observed since the nineteenth century. They reveal the importance of political choices made in terms of energy ownership, their redistributive effects, and the close links that exist between modes of ownership and technology and usage choices. > An **energy regime** corresponds to a set of material things, i.e. energy assets (natural resources or infrastructure for transforming them into energy and using them) and actors (states, municipalities, companies, individuals, cooperatives, trade unions, etc.) that are able to control or own these assets and seek to satisfy their needs. The political importance of modes of ownership ------------------------------------------------- Energy is a field dominated by social and political struggle for its control. There are five main types of energy assets: natural resources (such as coal or gas), extraction technologies (mines), conversion technologies (coal-fired power stations or solar panels), distribution technologies (electric cables or heating networks), and usage technologies (cars, machines, etc.). Across the world, each major type of energy asset has been owned by private companies, states, local authorities, and/or cooperatives. There is no fundamental reason why energy must be owned by the public or private sector: it is a political choice. Furthermore, energy ownership has evolved significantly over time. Figure 1 shows the share of electricity production under public or cooperative ownership between 1900 and 2025 in France, the United Kingdom, the United States and India. Electricity was mainly controlled by private companies in France and the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century, while local authorities played a more important role in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the New Deal marked a shift in production, which came under public (federal, state and local) or cooperative control. This accounted for around a quarter of total production from the 1940s and 1950s onwards. It should be noted, however, that this only concerned electricity, and that the gas, oil and coal sectors remained largely under private control in the United States, while they were totally or partially nationalised in the United Kingdom and France after World War II, as well as in India. Nevertheless, these dynamics demonstrate that ownership of electricity and, more generally energy, is primarily a political choice, which can be reversed or undone to align with the social goals of political majorities. **Figure 1. Share of the public or cooperative sector in electricity production in the United States, France, the United Kingdom and India, 1900–2025** Vertical axis caption: Public or cooperative ownership (% of production) ![](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ysm7xvvibsok3c9643p2o/Picture1.png?rlkey=gn9m7ovwljelf36dsfx95mpx6&dl=1) **Note**: From the mid-1940s to the 1990s, almost all electricity generation was under public control and ownership in France and the United Kingdom. In the United States, since the New Deal, 20-30% of electricity generation has been under public (federal, state or municipal) or cooperative control. **Sources and series**: [lucaschancel.com/energie](https://lucaschancel.com/energie/) for details on the sources and methods used. The socialisation of energy at the heart of wealth redistribution -------------------------------------------------------------------- How to explain the evolution of energy ownership? The different modes of energy ownership are not neutral. In the twentieth century, major parliamentary democracies made the socialisation of energy a cornerstone of their efforts to reduce social inequalities and steer the economy. > _In this context, the ‘socialization of energy’ means the fact of placing the extraction, production or distribution of energy under public control and ownership (whether at the national, regional or municipal level) or in a cooperative form._ In fact, nationalisation helped to reduce inequalities in accessing energy and to limit wealth inequalities by restricting the ability of private actors to concentrate energy wealth. In other words, placing energy under public control reduces the possibility of wealth monopolisation by a financial elite. Thus, in implementing the New Deal, F. D. Roosevelt saw public or cooperative ownership of energy as a means of providing energy to all his fellow citizens, while fighting the ‘evil traits’ (The words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his annual address to the United States Congress on 4 January 1935) of large private companies that were then charging excessive prices and concentrating economic and political power. He therefore nationalised certain energy companies and encouraged municipal and cooperative ownership of production and distribution networks.  As mentioned above, France and the United Kingdom went even further in the socialisation of energy, with total nationalisation after World War II. France nationalised the mines and created EDF-GDF in 1946, while the United Kingdom nationalised these sectors in 1947–1948. The goal in doing so was to rebuild an economy battered by war and reduce inequalities in access to energy and, more broadly, inequalities between workers and owners. In France, the programme of the National Council of the Resistance effectively advocated for jettisoning major economic and financial monopolies from the management of the economy. In the United Kingdom, the leader of the nationalisation movement declared in 1920: ‘I have never been able to believe that God placed coal in the bowels of the Earth for the benefit of less than 4,000 people out of the 45 million in this country.’(Member of Parliament William Brace during the parliamentary debate in the House of Commons on 11 February 1920). It should be noted that these transfers of ownership have always been fiercely opposed politically and legally. Everywhere, the owners of recently nationalised companies felt they had been treated unfairly. In France, their shareholders tried to force the government to back down and almost succeeded. In the United States and India, the owners brought cases before their Supreme Courts, which generally ruled in favour of the government. Then the neoliberal shift of the 1980s and 1990s led to a reversal of this trend. The United Kingdom, for example, privatised the oil sector, before doing the same for electricity and gas. Several countries, such as France and Sweden, have nevertheless maintained a high degree of public ownership in the power sector. Ownership models, technologies and uses ------------------------------------------ Finally, the history of energy regimes teaches us that choices related to energy ownership are closely linked to choices related to technology and usage, and therefore energy efficiency. Those who own the assets are particularly well placed to impose certain types of usage, which can be more or less resource-efficient. In the 1950s, for example, United States oil and car companies joined forces to buy up and bankrupt tram networks in order to eliminate this alternative to private transportation and ensure the triumph of the car. In Sweden, on the other hand, municipal heating companies are mandated to help users control demand, in line with a public service approach. These companies use indicators other than the maximisation of financial indicators alone. More generally, while public ownership of energy is not always successful – far from it (in recent decades, public companies have increasingly followed a similar logic to that of purely private firms) – past trends suggest that private ownership of energy systems tends to reinforce individual and collective irresponsibility in the use of resources. The French are attached to EDF's public status, as evidenced by a law passed in 2024 to keep the group under public ownership, in response to the Hercule bill, which envisaged splitting it up and hinted at the privatisation of one of its parts. In the European public debate, however, the issue of control over assets linked to the energy transition, in the electricity sector and beyond, is rarely discussed. > 70 billion euros, or around 2% of GDP, is the estimated additional annual investment required to finance France's transition. > Source: S. Mahfouz, J. Pisani-Ferry, _The Economic Impact of Climate Action. Report to the Prime Minister_, Paris, France Stratégie, 2023. The European Central Bank estimates that additional annual investment of around 2–3 per cent of GDP will be needed to achieve a decarbonised economy. These figures are consistent with those presented in the Mahfouz Pisani-Ferry report, which estimates the additional investment needed for the transition at around €70 billion per year for France (around 2 per cent of GDP). Depending on who makes these colossal investments and who owns the associated assets, different energy models will emerge and different levels of wealth concentration will appear. After forty years of decline in public assets as a result of privatisation and rising debt, European states could seize this opportunity to rebuild some of the lost wealth. This requires creating additional budgetary leeway and debt capacity, and therefore establishing a new social contract on taxation. Conversely, states can encourage, or even subsidise, private investment in the transition. The challenge is to prevent the privatisation of profits and the socialisation of losses, while limiting the risk of strategic assets being captured by a minority or by foreign capital. What should be the balance between public and private ownership in the energy sector? This is a choice that cannot be based on expert opinion alone: it raises real social issues that have consequences for energy use, equal access to carbon-free energy services and, more broadly, for wealth inequality. These issues must therefore be debated as such. The case of Northvolt, a Swedish electric battery manufacturer, is illuminating in this regard. The company, until recently touted as a flagship of European industry, went bankrupt. Rightly or wrongly, no European state intervened to invest in it. As a result, the largest European factory in the sector is now under American private ownership. The creation of a European public group, similar to Airbus in its early days, could have changed the course of events. These dilemmas will arise again in relation to the wind power industry, which has been weakened by market fluctuations and recent reversals concerning the environment. Like the twentieth century, the twenty-first century will be characterised by important questions related to the ownership of energy assets, with concrete consequences in terms of energy use and the concentration of economic and political power. It is therefore urgent to explicitly bring these issues into the public debate. **References:** * Chancel, L. 2025. _Énergie et Inégalités: Une histoire politique_, Paris: Seuil, * Fressoz,, J.-B. 2025. _Without Transition: A New History of Energy_, Paris: Seuil, * Mahfouz, S. and Pisani-Ferry, J. 2023. _The Economic Impact of Climate Action. A Report to the French Prime Minister,_ Paris: France Stratégie, * Smil, V. 2017. _Energy and Civilisation: A History_, Cambridge: MIT Press. **_This article was originally published in Conférence issue No. 4, titled "Facing the Environmental Challenge", a publication that sheds light on major contemporary issues and informs public and private decision makers._** ### Thématique `#Environnement` **Langue :** `#Anglais` --- ### Navigation pour IA - [Index de tous les contenus](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/llms.txt) - [Plan du site (Sitemap)](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/sitemap.xml) - [Retour à l'accueil](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/)