Can renewables ever be profitable enough?

Ed speaks to Brett Christophers about his new book The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet.

Brett Christophers is a professor of human geography at Uppsala University’s Institute for Housing and Urban Research and the author of four books on economic geography and political economy.

Brett and Ed discuss the commodification of electricity, the role of the state in renewable energy projects and why markets can’t be relied on to decarbonise the energy sector.

The Price is Wrong  was published in February and is available to buy from Verso books here.

Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.

Further listening:  

• 'Are markets the right tool for decarbonizing electricity?', Volts, 2024
• 'Everything You’re Told About Green Capitalism Is Wrong', Novara Media, 2024

Further reading:

•  'Antimarket', London Review of Books, 2024
• 'The Price is Wrong - Brett Christophers on saving the planet', Financial Times, 2024

Other books by Brett:

• Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World, 2023
• Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?, 2020
• The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain, 2018

Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.