The failure of Robin Hood Energy and the missing labour-centred perspective

The attempt to address energy poverty through a municipal, not-for-profit public company was as ambitious as it was path-breaking. And yet the failure of Robin Hood Energy, owned by Nottingham Council, in September 2020 has ultimately undermined all those, who work towards the re-municipalisation of utilities such as water, energy, the railways and postal services. In this blog post, I will reflect on a presentation by Steve Battlemuch about the failure of Robin Hood Energy to the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) in November 2020. While key reasons for the failure had already been known, this presentation revealed an additional, astonishing factor: a missing labour-centred perspective by the labour movement itself.

 

There are a number of clear reasons for why Robin Hood Energy was ultimately doomed. ‘The answer is simple’, writes Alan Simpson, an expert on green energy, ‘Britain’s energy market has been rigged in favour of big, centralised (and dirty) energy’ (Morning Star, 16 August 2020). In 2018 and 2019 alone, 15 smaller private energy companies failed. Similarly to these companies, Robin Hood Energy had failed to grow its customer base fast enough in order to be competitive with the big providers such as British Gas (Red Pepper, 8 September 2020).

Of course, mistakes were made by the company itself. The campaign group We Own It in an important report on public ownership has emphasised that democratisation is absolutely essential for the successful running of re-municipalized services. Customers able to participate in company decision-making will feel that they have a stake in the success of the company and develop a general pride in public services (We Own It 2019). The public, however, was never made into ‘genuine partners in a visionary idea’ by Robin Hood Energy (Morning Star, 16 August). 

Equally, a supportive regulatory framework of public service provision is missing in the UK unlike in Germany, where a right of local supply ensures that electricity surpluses can be sold to oneself at lower costs, allowing public companies to outcompete large, private suppliers.

Nevertheless, what Steve Battlemuch revealed in addition was a lack of clear support by agents from within the labour movement. Again and again, he presented the idea of a publicly owned, not-for-profit energy provider to various trade unions and groupings within the Labour Party. While the idea was received enthusiastically and received some support from Rebecca Long-Bailey, concrete assistance did not materialise. Some trade unions did not even sign up themselves as customer, not to speak about the fact that they refused writing to their members endorsing Robin Hood Energy. Trade unions, which organise workers in the private energy sector, were worried about endorsing a public alternative openly.

Such short-term, narrow thinking, however, comes at a high cost. Whenever, wherever people will make an argument for public energy provision, they are likely to be confronted with the ‘failure’ of Robin Hood Energy. It would have been absolutely essential for the labour movement to do everything possible that Robin Hood Energy succeeded. Having failed to do so will make it much harder to move to re-municipalisation of energy and other utilities in the future. 

 

Andreas Bieler

Professor of Political Economy

University of Nottingham/UK

Andreas.Bieler@nottingham.ac.uk

Personal website: http://andreasbieler.net

17 March 2021