We no longer need overpaid bureaucrats to plan and run our grids centrally
In a country where the state-owned electricity producer has had decades to fix its mistakes yet still succumbs to regular rolling blackouts, this cannot be truer. But Pattison fails to present an effective way to divorce electricity production from politics.
He presents a technocratic approach, whereby experts determine the solution to electricity production. The problem is that these experts must be appointed. And so long as electricity is monopolised by the state they will be appointed by politicians and for political gain. There is only one way to truly divorce politics from electricity production: privatisation. Allow any private company to feed into the grid, using smart systems to manage the difficulties of changing prices and varying scenarios. Allow consumers and communities to choose between many competing producers, which will then be forced to innovate and perform competently to be successful.century, and we no longer need overpaid bureaucrats to plan and run our grids centrally. I would say we never did.
For what method of electricity production we should use, let the market decide. Let consumers choose green energy, or coal, or nuclear. And let the private sector act according to the choices of consumers. And if some fail, more can just enter the gap and do better. The virtue of a free market is that failure can lead to success. The vice of politics is that failure is institutionalised. To depoliticise electricity, truly, it must be privatised.
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