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| 3-January-2026 |
It is a shame, then, that Matthew Huber, in a long-delayed response to my comments on his work,[1] avoids the crux of the argument, about grids trending towards decentralisation and how that technological change relates to social change. Instead he presents me, falsely, as representative of a “left energy ideology” that I do not recognise, and bashes that ideology over the head.
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| Moray East Offshore Wind Farm in Scotland. In 2024, UK wind farms were switched off for 13% of the time they could have been supplying the grid, costing the grid operator billions in compensation payments |
I suggest we clear this “ideology” out of the way, and return to issues that matter.
Huber’s imagined “ideology” sees the “struggle over energy” waged by “local ‘communities’ vs big, centralised state and corporate entities” and by “‘energy democracy’ in the form of local participation in the governance of electricity systems”. I simply don’t think in these terms. And that’s obvious in the articles to which Huber is responding.
“A socialist response to [pro-capitalist] narratives [on grid development] must be based not on rejection of renewables or of decentralisation”, I wrote in one of them, “but on rejection of corporate power and of the dictates of capitalist expansion and capitalist markets”, and on principles of decommodification and public ownership. Decentralised power supply is “no less welcome to socialists than the growth of the internet or mobile telephony: we don’t have to accept the form of ownership to acknowledge the technology’s potential.” I was, and remain, very cautious about the potential of co-ops and municipal projects, that, I argued, “operate, at best, as islands of common ownership in a sea dominated by corporations”.[2]
Huber’s “left energy ideology” also believes the energy system will be shaped by “profound decentralisation”. In the articles to which he is responding, I argued at length that technological decentralisation is not the same as social and economic decentralisation, but he once again passes over that crucial distinction.
As for nuclear power, Huber’s “left energy ideology” sees it as a “false solution” like carbon removal or hydrogen. I do not. Carbon removal and hydrogen, as promoted by oil companies and governments, prolong hydrocarbons production and divert resources from effective decarbonisation.[3] Nuclear, by contrast, is relatively low-carbon and efficient. I abhor it as technologically inimical to approaches aimed at reducing throughput of energy, and socially inimical to progress away from capitalism and militarism.[4]
By lambasting me as a defender of this “ideology” I don’t recognise, Huber avoids the essential electricity technology problems facing socialists. (Moreover, it is unclear what Huber means by the “left”, a catch-all term in which he appears to include liberal and Democratic US environmentalists.[5])
I suggest setting all this aside and focusing, to start with, on five substantial points.
1. Technological decentralisation.
Have relatively new energy technologies (combined-cycle gas turbines and combined heat and power plants, wind and solar), and computers, fundamentally changed electricity networks, and led to degrees of technological decentralisation in recent decades, or not? Was I correct to comment, in response to Huber and Fred Stafford, that “the growth of renewables is forcing two big changes to electricity networks: they are becoming less centralised, and bi- or multi-directional”?[6]
Huber doesn’t answer head-on. Instead, he questions my “optimism about some ‘third industrial revolution’”. What is the function of the word “some”? Why the sarcasm? Didn’t the inventions of the micro-chip, small-scale computing and the internet make any difference?
Huber writes: “The fact is, most societies still rely on centralised power stations for the bulk of their electricity.” Yes. But what matters here is the trend away from centralised power stations. This has been underway for decades, forcing grid companies to adapt. It has long been a staple of fossil-fuel-industry propaganda to exaggerate the difficulties involved in doing so.
From a socialist standpoint, surely we need to discuss what potential these changes offer, and what dangers, and the way that these technologies are shaped by capitalist social relations.[7] To have that discussion, we need first to acknowledge that change has actually happened.
2. Reliability and network integration.
Huber doesn’t answer head-on. Instead, he questions my “optimism about some ‘third industrial revolution’”. What is the function of the word “some”? Why the sarcasm? Didn’t the inventions of the micro-chip, small-scale computing and the internet make any difference?
Huber writes: “The fact is, most societies still rely on centralised power stations for the bulk of their electricity.” Yes. But what matters here is the trend away from centralised power stations. This has been underway for decades, forcing grid companies to adapt. It has long been a staple of fossil-fuel-industry propaganda to exaggerate the difficulties involved in doing so.
From a socialist standpoint, surely we need to discuss what potential these changes offer, and what dangers, and the way that these technologies are shaped by capitalist social relations.[7] To have that discussion, we need first to acknowledge that change has actually happened.
2. Reliability and network integration.
Huber wants to discuss “how much we could rely on ‘decentralised renewables’ themselves”. Who is “we”? What “reliability”? 24/7 unbroken supply is a problem specific to rich countries. In most of the world, a catalogue of causes – colonialism, under-investment, prioritisation of industrial customers, etc – means that, as well as hundreds of millions of people who have no electricity at all, there are some billions (3.5 billion by one estimate[8]) who do not have reasonably reliable supply. Much energy policy discussion concerns the relative weights of reliability and access; the calculations are different from those in rich countries.
Nevertheless, 24/7 unbroken supply is desirable and completely possible. What obstructs it, in rich countries? In my view, engineers have long ago worked out how to provide reliable supply using large proportions of generation from renewables. It takes longer than need be to implement, mainly because of under-investment in infrastructure, which is in turn due to capital’s profiteering imperatives.[9] Huber sees it differently: he presents networks as precious assets for which renewables are a burden.[10] I think that this concedes too much to corporate propaganda, and that the labour movement could and should approach renewables integration as welcome potential that could better be realised if networks were publicly owned and developed for common need, not profit.
Huber writes that renewables have “reliability concerns”. What, specifically? Wind and solar are – obviously – intermittent, but engineers worked out ways to deal with that years ago. My point about California, Scotland, Spain, Denmark and other places where renewables contribute a large proportion of electricity generation is not that they are close to nirvana, but that the engineering challenges of integrating renewables to the grid have been overcome.
In his Catalyst article, written with Fred Stafford, Huber implied that renewables increase the danger of blackouts. I pointed out that there is no evidence for this, and that, moreover, the world’s most disastrous blackouts have been in fossil-fuelled systems.[11] In response, Huber claims, falsely, that I blamed fossil fuels for blackouts, “like blaming blood flow for a heart attack”. I didn’t, and wouldn’t, make such an idiotic suggestion. My understanding is that blackouts are usually caused by problems in networks – their physical state, the lack of investment, management, technical issues, etc – and not by the fuel used. (The initial investigations of the Iberian peninsula blackout in April 2025 point in this direction too.)
All this points to a methodological problem. An issue such as integration of renewables into electricity grids, which has so many political, social, economic and technological aspects, is unlikely to be resolved by polemical cheap shots. It needs careful analysis. (The same applies to the related question of the relative prices, and costs, of renewables and nuclear, which has so many moving parts.[12])
3. Climate emergency and construction time-scales.
Nevertheless, 24/7 unbroken supply is desirable and completely possible. What obstructs it, in rich countries? In my view, engineers have long ago worked out how to provide reliable supply using large proportions of generation from renewables. It takes longer than need be to implement, mainly because of under-investment in infrastructure, which is in turn due to capital’s profiteering imperatives.[9] Huber sees it differently: he presents networks as precious assets for which renewables are a burden.[10] I think that this concedes too much to corporate propaganda, and that the labour movement could and should approach renewables integration as welcome potential that could better be realised if networks were publicly owned and developed for common need, not profit.
Huber writes that renewables have “reliability concerns”. What, specifically? Wind and solar are – obviously – intermittent, but engineers worked out ways to deal with that years ago. My point about California, Scotland, Spain, Denmark and other places where renewables contribute a large proportion of electricity generation is not that they are close to nirvana, but that the engineering challenges of integrating renewables to the grid have been overcome.
In his Catalyst article, written with Fred Stafford, Huber implied that renewables increase the danger of blackouts. I pointed out that there is no evidence for this, and that, moreover, the world’s most disastrous blackouts have been in fossil-fuelled systems.[11] In response, Huber claims, falsely, that I blamed fossil fuels for blackouts, “like blaming blood flow for a heart attack”. I didn’t, and wouldn’t, make such an idiotic suggestion. My understanding is that blackouts are usually caused by problems in networks – their physical state, the lack of investment, management, technical issues, etc – and not by the fuel used. (The initial investigations of the Iberian peninsula blackout in April 2025 point in this direction too.)
All this points to a methodological problem. An issue such as integration of renewables into electricity grids, which has so many political, social, economic and technological aspects, is unlikely to be resolved by polemical cheap shots. It needs careful analysis. (The same applies to the related question of the relative prices, and costs, of renewables and nuclear, which has so many moving parts.[12])
3. Climate emergency and construction time-scales.
I argued that renewables help address the climate emergency not only because they fit better with a strategy based on reducing throughput, but also because they are quicker to install than nuclear stations.[13] Huber writes: yes, but renewables take “many years, if not decades” to integrate into the grid. I say: yes, but that’s because “network development has trailed behind renewables expansion”.[14] I pointed to China’s success in overcoming curtailment, and to the interconnection queues in the UK and elsewhere aggravated by blatant speculation.
Huber says that “more concerning” still is that “more renewables will undoubtedly require thousands of miles of new long distance transmission lines”. Why would the type of generation affect the quantity of transmission lines? Whatever the type of generation capacity, if it is far away from demand centres, transmission lines are needed.
This is a repetition of the main argument. For Huber, renewables are an irksome burden on existing infrastructure. For me, they are a welcome technology to which the grid can and should adapt.
4. The causal role of neoliberalism in renewables development.
Huber says that “more concerning” still is that “more renewables will undoubtedly require thousands of miles of new long distance transmission lines”. Why would the type of generation affect the quantity of transmission lines? Whatever the type of generation capacity, if it is far away from demand centres, transmission lines are needed.
This is a repetition of the main argument. For Huber, renewables are an irksome burden on existing infrastructure. For me, they are a welcome technology to which the grid can and should adapt.
4. The causal role of neoliberalism in renewables development.
In May 2023, Huber presented an argument[15] that, in the 1970s, the advance of neoliberalism pushed forward the use of renewables. “Against a complex and centrally-planned [energy] system, ‘grassroots’ local communities aspired to get off the grid”; against “large-scale social integration of complex industrial societies, the neoliberal turn represents an anti-social reaction against society itself.” The Carter administration (1977-80) played a key role, as did the 1970s “energy crisis”; “by the 90s” a “totally new frontier” of electricity investment had been “unleashed”; the main beneficiaries were small-scale gas generators, but “it also included a new class of capitalists building renewable energy projects”.
I responded,[16] showing that the timing was out. Privately-owned renewables generation in the US started in the 2000s, not the 1980s. The chain of events in which Huber saw a causal connection between neoliberalism and renewables expansion did not happen.
Huber has now changed his mind. Abandoning his unsustainable argument about the 1980s (“the early periods of neoliberal electricity restructuring in the 1980s and 1990s were mostly to the benefit of ‘merchant’ gas generators (and even some nuclear)”), he asserts that “the significant increase of renewables in the last 15 years is simply a continuation of these neoliberal trends”. But what trends are continuing? What happened to the “new class of [renewables-owning] capitalists”? Did it exist? No, not in the 1980s. Which leaves an unfillable hole in Huber’s claim that neoliberal policies of the 1970s were the primary cause of renewables expansion in the 2000s.
5. The ideological affinity between neoliberalism and decentralisation.
I responded,[16] showing that the timing was out. Privately-owned renewables generation in the US started in the 2000s, not the 1980s. The chain of events in which Huber saw a causal connection between neoliberalism and renewables expansion did not happen.
Huber has now changed his mind. Abandoning his unsustainable argument about the 1980s (“the early periods of neoliberal electricity restructuring in the 1980s and 1990s were mostly to the benefit of ‘merchant’ gas generators (and even some nuclear)”), he asserts that “the significant increase of renewables in the last 15 years is simply a continuation of these neoliberal trends”. But what trends are continuing? What happened to the “new class of [renewables-owning] capitalists”? Did it exist? No, not in the 1980s. Which leaves an unfillable hole in Huber’s claim that neoliberal policies of the 1970s were the primary cause of renewables expansion in the 2000s.
5. The ideological affinity between neoliberalism and decentralisation.
Huber claimed that the “neoliberal turn” was accompanied by a “comparable turn” by “the environmental Left”, towards “communitarian localism”. As evidence, he quoted the German environmentalist Rudolf Bahro. In response, I pointed out that Bahro had long ceased to identify as “left” when he embraced such ideas, whereas a variety of socialists who engaged with environmental and energy issues in the 1970s thought in terms of systemic transformation. They were in some cases in critical conversation with localism, but not adherents of it.[17]
Huber has changed his mind on this, too. Now, he writes that his point was to “show the ideological affinity between neoliberal economic utopias of decentralised market forces, and energy thinkers like Amory Lovins”. But Lovins can not plausibly be identified with “the left”, however loosely defined. To what, then, did Huber’s cover-all condemnation of “the environmental Left” – in whose ideological affinity with neoliberalism he found the roots of its “unwitting alliance” with 21st century decentralisation and deregulation – refer?
I have never hesitated to take a self-critical view of the history of socialism.[18] But this blanket denunciation of “the Left” does not fit with the historical record. It is a polemical trick, that goes with Huber’s dogged, deliberate conflation of technological decentralisation, political decentralisation and market liberalisation.[19] Electricity issues become one-dimensional: on one side, public power, nuclear and centralisation; on the other, neoliberalism, renewables and decentralisation. The whole scheme falls to pieces when it comes into contact with facts.
A few general points
One key reason I gave that socialists should welcome renewables, especially decentralised ones, ahead of nuclear, is that they are compatible with industrial policies that prioritise reduction of energy throughput through the economy.[20] Arguments for nuclear are very often linked to assumptions that “demand”[21] for electricity, as a commodity in the capitalist economy, will continue to increase indefinitely. Huber is reticent on this. He implicitly assumes endlessly rising demand. I do not believe a socialist approach to electricity networks can be worked out, in the midst of climate crisis, without clarity on this.
Huber also has yet to comment on what, to me, is central: what this exchange says about our respective views of socialism. Nuclear power inevitably implies a strong state, the antithesis of socialism as I understand it. Renewables have at least the potential, albeit hardly yet realised, to enhance counter-power. To my mind, that should influence our near-term views of these technologies.
About “quibbles”. To me, this is about accuracy. The fact that Robert Idel’s research on system costs is purely theoretical matters, because Huber and Stafford quoted it as proof that “the limited use value of solar and wind” leads to “broader system costs” – as though that complex issue can be solved by that research, which it can not.[22] The fact that Mark Nelson is a propagandist for the nuclear industry matters, because Huber and Stafford presented him as an “analyst” who “explained” that cheap renewables are no more use for the electricity grid than flimsy tents are for solving a housing crisis – as though this statement carried some sort of authority, which it does not.[23]
I think this is an issue of trust. Our friends and comrades outside universities who read the socialist press surely expect that Huber and I, and others in, or connected to, universities, fact-check our arguments. For many of these readers, due to life’s realities, time is desperately short. It behoves those in relatively privileged academic surroundings to produce accurate, reasoned analysis. The one-liners fall far short of such expectations.
Finally, I return to Huber’s false assertion that I speak for some “left energy ideology” that I don’t recognise. “This Left”, he writes, “is rooted in the academic humanities […], social sciences, environmental NGOs, and a smattering of ideologically aligned energy systems modellers”. Huber says that he, and Stafford, do not follow the “common sense” of this “Left”; instead they “look to the unions/labour for leadership” on decarbonisation, and “draw our analyses more from engineers and experts […] and the actual workers/ unions in the electricity system itself”.
There is a long, dishonourable tradition in socialism of characterising views you disagree with as being rooted in alien class influences.[24] Unpleasant as this stuff usually is, in this case it is also mendacious.
Huber’s suggestion that his research differs from mine because he looks to “engineers and experts” is baseless. The articles he is responding to are packed with references to such sources. As are my book on fossil fuel consumption, and my numerous publications on Russian, Ukrainian and central Asian energy systems.[25] It is ludicrous, too, for Huber to suggest that he “looks to the unions/labour” in a way that I, buried in “the academic humanities”, don’t. I have spent decades writing about, and working with, energy unions and militants in them.[26] This fact-free invective reflects poorly on Huber, and diverts attention from things that matter. 3 January 2026.
References
[1] M. Huber, “A response to Simon Pirani”, Substack, 17 December 2025. This responded to articles published in September and October 2023, and August 2024
[2] See “Wind, water, solar and socialism. Part 2: electricity networks” (People and Nature, 2023) section 2.3, “What are the starting points for a socialist view of this?”
[3] My view of carbon capture is summed up in “Carbon dioxide removal sucks” (People and Nature, 2020) and “Stop spending funds on carbon capture failure” (People and Nature, 2023). I wrote about hydrogen in “The hydrogen hoax” (People and Nature, 2020), “Hydrogen homes is a terrible idea” (The Ecologist, 2020), “India must find answers” (The Wire, April 2023), “Labour embraces Saudi Arabia’s dystopian ‘energy transition’” (People and Nature, 2024) and elsewhere
[4] See “Wind, water, solar and socialism. Part 1: energy supply”, section 1.5, “Is it not more realistic to include nuclear in our perspectives?”
[5] In his initial article, written jointly with Fred Stafford, Huber criticises “the environmental left”, and makes specific reference to the environmentalist Bill McKibben, the electricity journalist David Roberts and David Wallace-Wells, who writes on climate change, none of whom are affiliated with the labour movement or socialist organisations, as far as I know. (M. Huber and F. Stafford, “Socialist Politics and the Electricity Grid”, Catalyst 6:4 (2023))
[6] On decentralisation, see “Wind, water, solar and socialism. Part 2: electricity networks”, section 2.1, “Is it really technologically possible”, etc
[7] I looked at technological potentials and constraints, with particular reference to rooftop solar, in: “Rooftop solar: glints of hope in the darkening climate crisis” (People and Nature, 2025)
[8] See “3.5 billion people lack reliable power” (Energy for Growth hub, 2020). That summarises an academic article that is unfortunately behind a paywall: John Ayaburi et al, “Measuring ‘reasonably reliable’ access to electricity services” (The Electricity Journal 33:7 (2020), 106828)
[9] A good summary of the research on grids and decarbonisation is: Electricity Grids and Secure Energy Transitions (IEA, 2024)
[10] See, e.g., M. Huber and F. Stafford, “Socialist Politics and the Electricity Grid”
[11] See S. Pirani, “Socialism and electricity. Renewables and decentralisation versus nuclear”, Capitalism, Nature and Socialism, August 2024, top of page 66
[12] The debate on prices, and costs, would need a whole article of its own to introduce. See “Wind, water, solar and socialism”. Part 1, the note at the end
[13] S. Pirani, “Socialism and electricity”, Capitalism, Nature and Socialism, end of page 64
[14] On network development trailing behind renewables expansion, see “Wind, water, solar and socialism”. Part 2, section 2.1
[15] M. Huber, “Renewable energy’s progressive halo”, Unherd, April 2023
[16] S. Pirani, “Realising renewable energy’s potential means combating capital”, Spectre, October 2023
[17] I mentioned Barry Commoner, Andre Gorz and the Italian autonomist tradition
[18] See, for example, S. Pirani, The Russian Revolution in Retreat: Soviet workers and the new communist elite 1920-24 (Routledge, 2008)
[19] On technological decentralisation and political decentralisation, see “Wind, water, solar and socialism”. Part 2, especially sections 2.1, 2.4 and 2.5
[20] S. Pirani, “Socialism and electricity”, Capitalism, Nature and Socialism, page 64, and e.g. “How to do away with fossil fuel consumption” (People and Nature, 2023)
[21] On commodification, see S. Pirani, “How energy was commodified, and how it could be decommodified” (People and Nature, 2021)
[22] On Robert Idel, see “Wind, water, solar and socialism”. Part 1, the note at the end
[23] On Mark Nelson, see “Wind, water, solar and socialism”. Part 2, section 2.4. In 2023, when cited by Huber and Stafford, Nelson described himself in public forums as a “nuclear advocate”, and was managing director at Radiant Energy Fund, an organisation he founded to lobby against the closure of nuclear plants. Since October 2025 he has worked for the Nuclear Company, a nuclear construction investment vehicle. He has co-authored many technical articles on aspects of nuclear engineering, but not any published research on electricity networks that I could find
[24] This presumably joins up with Huber’s weird theory about a “professional class” who are the “main opposition to climate change” (M. Huber, Climate Change as Class War (Verso, 2022), pages 28-29)
[25] There is a list of some research publications at simonpirani.com
[26] I have never had a full-time university job. When invited to join the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies as a research fellow, in 2007, I chose to work part-time, partly to allow sufficient time to continue my work on and with the labour movement. One outcome was my writing on the historically vital Kazakh oil workers’ strike of 2011. See “Zhanaozen: worker organisation and repression” (People and Nature, 2013). Before that, I wrote as a journalist about the UK miners’ strike of 1984-85, co-wrote an academic article about it, ghost-wrote a memoir of it by a union militant, spent six years as the editor of regional, and then national, mineworkers’ union journals, and wrote stacks of articles on Russian mineworkers and one of the only records in English of the great Turkish mining communities’ revolt of 1991 (“Bread, Peace, Democracy”: the Turkish miners’ strike 1991 (Trade Union Printing Services, 1991)). There are links to some of these publications here.
Huber has changed his mind on this, too. Now, he writes that his point was to “show the ideological affinity between neoliberal economic utopias of decentralised market forces, and energy thinkers like Amory Lovins”. But Lovins can not plausibly be identified with “the left”, however loosely defined. To what, then, did Huber’s cover-all condemnation of “the environmental Left” – in whose ideological affinity with neoliberalism he found the roots of its “unwitting alliance” with 21st century decentralisation and deregulation – refer?
I have never hesitated to take a self-critical view of the history of socialism.[18] But this blanket denunciation of “the Left” does not fit with the historical record. It is a polemical trick, that goes with Huber’s dogged, deliberate conflation of technological decentralisation, political decentralisation and market liberalisation.[19] Electricity issues become one-dimensional: on one side, public power, nuclear and centralisation; on the other, neoliberalism, renewables and decentralisation. The whole scheme falls to pieces when it comes into contact with facts.
A few general points
One key reason I gave that socialists should welcome renewables, especially decentralised ones, ahead of nuclear, is that they are compatible with industrial policies that prioritise reduction of energy throughput through the economy.[20] Arguments for nuclear are very often linked to assumptions that “demand”[21] for electricity, as a commodity in the capitalist economy, will continue to increase indefinitely. Huber is reticent on this. He implicitly assumes endlessly rising demand. I do not believe a socialist approach to electricity networks can be worked out, in the midst of climate crisis, without clarity on this.
Huber also has yet to comment on what, to me, is central: what this exchange says about our respective views of socialism. Nuclear power inevitably implies a strong state, the antithesis of socialism as I understand it. Renewables have at least the potential, albeit hardly yet realised, to enhance counter-power. To my mind, that should influence our near-term views of these technologies.
About “quibbles”. To me, this is about accuracy. The fact that Robert Idel’s research on system costs is purely theoretical matters, because Huber and Stafford quoted it as proof that “the limited use value of solar and wind” leads to “broader system costs” – as though that complex issue can be solved by that research, which it can not.[22] The fact that Mark Nelson is a propagandist for the nuclear industry matters, because Huber and Stafford presented him as an “analyst” who “explained” that cheap renewables are no more use for the electricity grid than flimsy tents are for solving a housing crisis – as though this statement carried some sort of authority, which it does not.[23]
I think this is an issue of trust. Our friends and comrades outside universities who read the socialist press surely expect that Huber and I, and others in, or connected to, universities, fact-check our arguments. For many of these readers, due to life’s realities, time is desperately short. It behoves those in relatively privileged academic surroundings to produce accurate, reasoned analysis. The one-liners fall far short of such expectations.
Finally, I return to Huber’s false assertion that I speak for some “left energy ideology” that I don’t recognise. “This Left”, he writes, “is rooted in the academic humanities […], social sciences, environmental NGOs, and a smattering of ideologically aligned energy systems modellers”. Huber says that he, and Stafford, do not follow the “common sense” of this “Left”; instead they “look to the unions/labour for leadership” on decarbonisation, and “draw our analyses more from engineers and experts […] and the actual workers/ unions in the electricity system itself”.
There is a long, dishonourable tradition in socialism of characterising views you disagree with as being rooted in alien class influences.[24] Unpleasant as this stuff usually is, in this case it is also mendacious.
Huber’s suggestion that his research differs from mine because he looks to “engineers and experts” is baseless. The articles he is responding to are packed with references to such sources. As are my book on fossil fuel consumption, and my numerous publications on Russian, Ukrainian and central Asian energy systems.[25] It is ludicrous, too, for Huber to suggest that he “looks to the unions/labour” in a way that I, buried in “the academic humanities”, don’t. I have spent decades writing about, and working with, energy unions and militants in them.[26] This fact-free invective reflects poorly on Huber, and diverts attention from things that matter. 3 January 2026.
References
[1] M. Huber, “A response to Simon Pirani”, Substack, 17 December 2025. This responded to articles published in September and October 2023, and August 2024
[2] See “Wind, water, solar and socialism. Part 2: electricity networks” (People and Nature, 2023) section 2.3, “What are the starting points for a socialist view of this?”
[3] My view of carbon capture is summed up in “Carbon dioxide removal sucks” (People and Nature, 2020) and “Stop spending funds on carbon capture failure” (People and Nature, 2023). I wrote about hydrogen in “The hydrogen hoax” (People and Nature, 2020), “Hydrogen homes is a terrible idea” (The Ecologist, 2020), “India must find answers” (The Wire, April 2023), “Labour embraces Saudi Arabia’s dystopian ‘energy transition’” (People and Nature, 2024) and elsewhere
[4] See “Wind, water, solar and socialism. Part 1: energy supply”, section 1.5, “Is it not more realistic to include nuclear in our perspectives?”
[5] In his initial article, written jointly with Fred Stafford, Huber criticises “the environmental left”, and makes specific reference to the environmentalist Bill McKibben, the electricity journalist David Roberts and David Wallace-Wells, who writes on climate change, none of whom are affiliated with the labour movement or socialist organisations, as far as I know. (M. Huber and F. Stafford, “Socialist Politics and the Electricity Grid”, Catalyst 6:4 (2023))
[6] On decentralisation, see “Wind, water, solar and socialism. Part 2: electricity networks”, section 2.1, “Is it really technologically possible”, etc
[7] I looked at technological potentials and constraints, with particular reference to rooftop solar, in: “Rooftop solar: glints of hope in the darkening climate crisis” (People and Nature, 2025)
[8] See “3.5 billion people lack reliable power” (Energy for Growth hub, 2020). That summarises an academic article that is unfortunately behind a paywall: John Ayaburi et al, “Measuring ‘reasonably reliable’ access to electricity services” (The Electricity Journal 33:7 (2020), 106828)
[9] A good summary of the research on grids and decarbonisation is: Electricity Grids and Secure Energy Transitions (IEA, 2024)
[10] See, e.g., M. Huber and F. Stafford, “Socialist Politics and the Electricity Grid”
[11] See S. Pirani, “Socialism and electricity. Renewables and decentralisation versus nuclear”, Capitalism, Nature and Socialism, August 2024, top of page 66
[12] The debate on prices, and costs, would need a whole article of its own to introduce. See “Wind, water, solar and socialism”. Part 1, the note at the end
[13] S. Pirani, “Socialism and electricity”, Capitalism, Nature and Socialism, end of page 64
[14] On network development trailing behind renewables expansion, see “Wind, water, solar and socialism”. Part 2, section 2.1
[15] M. Huber, “Renewable energy’s progressive halo”, Unherd, April 2023
[16] S. Pirani, “Realising renewable energy’s potential means combating capital”, Spectre, October 2023
[17] I mentioned Barry Commoner, Andre Gorz and the Italian autonomist tradition
[18] See, for example, S. Pirani, The Russian Revolution in Retreat: Soviet workers and the new communist elite 1920-24 (Routledge, 2008)
[19] On technological decentralisation and political decentralisation, see “Wind, water, solar and socialism”. Part 2, especially sections 2.1, 2.4 and 2.5
[20] S. Pirani, “Socialism and electricity”, Capitalism, Nature and Socialism, page 64, and e.g. “How to do away with fossil fuel consumption” (People and Nature, 2023)
[21] On commodification, see S. Pirani, “How energy was commodified, and how it could be decommodified” (People and Nature, 2021)
[22] On Robert Idel, see “Wind, water, solar and socialism”. Part 1, the note at the end
[23] On Mark Nelson, see “Wind, water, solar and socialism”. Part 2, section 2.4. In 2023, when cited by Huber and Stafford, Nelson described himself in public forums as a “nuclear advocate”, and was managing director at Radiant Energy Fund, an organisation he founded to lobby against the closure of nuclear plants. Since October 2025 he has worked for the Nuclear Company, a nuclear construction investment vehicle. He has co-authored many technical articles on aspects of nuclear engineering, but not any published research on electricity networks that I could find
[24] This presumably joins up with Huber’s weird theory about a “professional class” who are the “main opposition to climate change” (M. Huber, Climate Change as Class War (Verso, 2022), pages 28-29)
[25] There is a list of some research publications at simonpirani.com
[26] I have never had a full-time university job. When invited to join the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies as a research fellow, in 2007, I chose to work part-time, partly to allow sufficient time to continue my work on and with the labour movement. One outcome was my writing on the historically vital Kazakh oil workers’ strike of 2011. See “Zhanaozen: worker organisation and repression” (People and Nature, 2013). Before that, I wrote as a journalist about the UK miners’ strike of 1984-85, co-wrote an academic article about it, ghost-wrote a memoir of it by a union militant, spent six years as the editor of regional, and then national, mineworkers’ union journals, and wrote stacks of articles on Russian mineworkers and one of the only records in English of the great Turkish mining communities’ revolt of 1991 (“Bread, Peace, Democracy”: the Turkish miners’ strike 1991 (Trade Union Printing Services, 1991)). There are links to some of these publications here.
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