In 2020, the International Energy Agency declared that solar power had become the “cheapest electricity in history.” In 2024, renewable energy has still not supplanted fossil fuels. Consumption of greener sources of energy has grown since 2020, but more fossil fuels are burned for electricity with each passing year. This is the paradox at the heart of Brett Christophers’s new book, The Price Is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet (Verso, 2024).

The power sector currently accounts for more than 25 percent of global carbon emissions, nearly double the carbon cost of all global transportation. That percentage could easily grow if climate policy initiatives to “electrify everything” are not met with an unprecedented expansion of renewable energy production and a phase-out of fossil fuels. World leaders and private firms are not spending enough to make that transition happen. The International Energy Agency projects that moving the electricity system away from fossil fuels would require $1.3 trillion in global spending on renewables each year. The actual annual investments are not even half that number.

This financial reality is reflected in the emissions data. With the exception of 2020, the first year of the Covid pandemic, global emissions from electricity production have continued the steady rise that began with the Industrial Revolution. Cheap renewable power has not reversed that all-important vector. In a market system of energy provision, there is no guarantee it ever will.

Markets, good at making money, are bad at decarbonization. Renewables have been the cheapest source of energy generation since 2016. But solar and wind development is not keeping pace with the total growth of energy use globally, meaning more fossil fuels are burned for electricity each year than the last. While some commentators believe that the lobbying power of fossil fuels or bureaucratic red tape is to blame, Christophers argues the reason is primarily economic. Renewables are not being built fast enough because investing in renewables is not profitable for capitalist firms. When economists focus on how cheap it has become to produce renewables—a framework that centers consumer choice—they are looking at the wrong metric. Profit, not consumer benefits, drive energy economics.

“The only things that are inherent to capitalism are the profit imperative and private ownership of the means of production,” Christophers writes. “Renewable power is typically an uncertain proposition in profitability terms, and this means that capitalism—being profit-oriented by its nature—is ill-equipped to deliver it.”

Cristophers argues that renewables will always require substantial state subsidies to encourage private investment. Even with this state support, relying on the whims of financial capital for such a crucial aspect of global decarbonization is a risky prospect. The state can incentivize investment, but governments have not shown a willingness to force firms to bankroll necessary but unprofitable renewable projects.

It's public power, Christophers argues, not private energy markets, that can genuinely catalyze the push for decarbonization. In the United States, markets are the assumed solution to everything from renewable development to global economic decarbonization. Public power, Christophers suggests, would remove the profit motive inherent in a capitalist system by aligning a just energy transition with a public good. But attempting to make a privatized and profitable sector of energy production into a public infrastructure would entail a political contest with the class of people who benefit from the system as it stands today. Engaging in that contest will require building political will.

The same tendencies that make renewables a bad fit for private investment mean energy users have much to gain from renewables in a public system. Under public ownership, the cheap and abundant nature of solar and wind power could be harnessed to improve the everyday lives of working people, offering the building blocks of a coalition interested in a decarbonized power sector.

In 2017, energy prices in California dipped into the negative. It was not an isolated incident. As renewables expand, negative power prices are becoming more common in both Europe and the US. This wave of free energy indicates a looming problem for renewable development under capitalism. Renewable energy is indeed becoming cheaper, but rather than signaling a tipping point in the energy transition, that very affordability is a red flag for investors worried that a race to the bottom on energy prices will undermine the profitability of the sector.

This economic order in which free electricity is a barrier to decarbonization is a result of decisions our governments make every day. Western governments are currently committed to building public/private coalitions in which tax dollars are spent to ensure profitable returns from renewable investments. Grassroots movements for public power could build different coalitions. Instead of subsidizing corporate profits, public power could lower consumer costs, allowing Americans to enjoy the benefits of cheap and abundant solar power and aligning the everyday needs of working people with the infrastructures required to create an economy that enables us to live prosperous lives on a finite planet.

These renewable promises are beyond the scope of Christophers’s book, but are an essential factor if we hope to build a future powered by renewable energy.