NI 480 - March, 2015

The great green energy grab

A note from the editor

‘Corporate renewables vs people’s power’

We must demand something better.

Last week, a fuel poverty activist told me this story. She’d been invited as the token campaigner to a corporate energy event, and was chatting to a rep from the notorious price-hiking frack-happy utility company British Gas. She decided to ask him a cheeky question: ‘What will you do if we get our way? If the world switches away from fossil fuels, to better insulation and renewable energy? What happens to your company then?’

The utility rep replied: ‘Well, I guess we’ll just move into insulation and renewable energy.’

This suggestion filled her – and me – with dread. It’s easy to get caught up in the urgency of climate change, and assume that we just need more renewable energy, and it doesn’t matter exactly what it is or who provides it. This magazine explores why, and how, we must demand something better: an energy system controlled by people, not by corporations, providing genuinely clean energy to everyone who needs it.

Continuing the environmental theme, our Argument this month provocatively asks: if you care about climate change, should you have children? And Gavin Evans considers the ugly return of racism into science and academia.

Danny Chivers for the New Internationalist co-operative.
www.newint.org

The big story

The London Array, off Britain’s east coast, currently the world’s biggest offshore wind farm. Jointly owned by E-ON, DONG Energy, UAE-based Masdar and Canadian investment fund La Caisse.

Photo: London Array Limited

Whose renewable future?

Is big business poised to capture the renewables revolution? Danny Chivers draws up the battle lines.

Read this article

Features

Renewable energy - the facts

How much energy, how it's used and what we really need.

Read this article

Under the sun: Children shelter beneath a solar panel in Dharnai village.Photo: Vivek M. / Greenpeace

From best to worst: renewable energy around the world

Inspiring examples of democratic, renewable energy – and also how not to do it.

NI 480 - March, 2015

The great green energy grab

A note from the editor

‘Corporate renewables vs people’s power’

The big story

Is big business poised to capture the renewables revolution? Danny Chivers draws up the battle lines.

Features

How much energy, how it's used and what we really need.

Inspiring examples of democratic, renewable energy – and also how not to do it.

Some ideas and starting points on how you can help build a cleaner, fairer energy future.

Desert solar plants planned for North Africa are just another exploitative resource grab, argues Hamza Hamouchene.

Surveys tell us that the public love wind power, so why do certain countries see such fierce campaigns against it? Helle Abelvik-Lawson investigates.

Community micro-grids, government-controlled energy, or both? Three experts thrash out the options.

Dreaming of a better future, some 700,000 Indonesians each year join the ranks of migrant workers abroad. But many face exploitation, abuse and deception at the hands of their employers. Michael Malay travelled to the West Javan province of Indramayu to talk to some of those who have returned.

Racism disguised as academic research must be robustly challenged, argues Gavin Evans.

Opinion

Professor Anne Hendrixson and journalist Erica Gies go head to head.

By Kate Smurthwaite.

Agenda

Regulars

Praise, blame and all points in between? Your feedback published in the March 2015 magazine.

The charming city is coming back to life, but only for some.

Cartoon by Simon Kneebone.

Osvaldo Gutierrez Gomez from Cuba with ‘Weapon’.

Cartoon by P J Polyp.

Cartoon by Marc Roberts.

The self-aggrandizing Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.

Highlighting the work of artists and photographers from the Majority World.

Algerian author Mohammed Moulessehoul tells Graeme Green why he writes under his wife's name of Yasmina Khadra.

Film, Book & Music Reviews

War Is a Wound, Peace Is a Scar, by Hanoi Masters; Convoque seu Buda by Criolo.

Dreamcatcher, directed by Kim Longinotto; Love is All, directed by Kim Longinotto; Still Alice, directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland.

Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera; The Radical Imagination by Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish; Sex in China by Elaine Jeffreys with Haiqing Yu; Dear Leader by Jang Jin-sung.

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