1. 1.Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED)
1.TUED and Global Labor’s Climate Politics

2. A global, multi-sector, initiative to advance
democratic direction and control of energy
GLI International Summer School
July 2014
Sean Sweeney, Ph.D. and Lara Skinner, Ph.D.

3. Why TUED?
1. “Business as Usual” = Civilizational Crisis
2. The Energy Transition is NOT happening
3. Solutions Exist – And Unions Can Play a Crucial Role

4. BAU – Emissions Set to Rise by 4-6 Degrees
Celsius

5. Fossil Fuels are NOT Running Out

6. Extreme Energy on the Rise
Tar Sands Oil

Shale gas “fracking”

Mountaintop removal
and surface coal mining

Deep sea / Artic oil
drilling

7. Energy Expansion, Not Transition
Investment in Clean Energy v Conventional Capacity, 2004- 2011, $BN
Fossil fuel investment is calculated from EIA and IEA data. Renewable energy
investment includes asset finance and small-scale projects, but excludes large hydro.
Sources: EIA, IEA, Bloomberg New Energy Finance

8. Renewable Energy is Below 5% of Electricity
Production Nearly Everywhere

9. More Fossil Fuels, More Emissions ≠ Energy
Equity
Share of people without electricity access for developing countries, 2008

10. Under Attack- Workers and Communities
•Many workers lack rights &
union representation
•Health & safety issues
•Production up,
•employment down
•Companies closing union
operations, reopening non-
union.

11. The Great Inaction
Failure to agree is a cover for ‘business as usual’

12. The U.S. supports a voluntary ‘pledge and review’
approach – the ‘Copenhagen Accord’
“Our view in the
U.S. is that it (a
binding climate
agreement) is not
a necessary thing
to happen right
now .”
Todd Stern, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change, Bankok, April 7, 2011

13. November 2013: The Collapse of the Talks in Warsaw

14. ons and environmental groups walk out of the Warsaw talks….
Commit to build a ‘peoples-led climate movement’

15. The Path Forward for Unions
Unions Need a Climate Program that can:
Effectively address the climate crisis and the ecological emergency
Build trade union and working class power
Challenge capitalist political economy and the ‘growth imperative’
Assert social ownership and democratic control over key sectors

16. Time for a class-based and independent trade union approach
“Rio+20 is about scaling-up
and accelerating the Green
Economy transformation
already manifest in most if
not all countries across the
globe.”
-- Remarks by Achim Steiner to the
Second Trade Union Assembly on
Labour and the Environment,
“Rio+20”, June 12, 2012

17. What stands in the way?

18. Energy: Developing a Framework for Action
•Resist – Business as usual, “carbon lock in” and the extreme energy agenda
•Reclaim – Take back what’s been privatized, de-marketize public companies
•Restructure – Deploy renewable energy to scale under social ownership and
democratic control

19. Immediate Goals of TUED: connect the struggles,
build a global community, develop strategies and alternatives

22. Energy Democracy – Power to the People

23. www.energydemocracyinitiative.org