The smart grid as commons: Exploring alternatives to infrastructure financialisation

This article explores a tension between financialisation of electricity infrastructures and efforts to bring critical urban systems into common ownership. Focusing on the emerging landscape of electricity regulation and e-mobility in the United Kingdom (UK), it examines how electricity grid ownership has become financialised, and why the economic assumptions that enabled this financialisation are being called into question. New technologies, such as smart electricity meters and electric vehicles, provide cities with new tools to tackle poor air quality and greenhouse gas emissions. Electricity grids are key enabling infrastructures but the companies that run them do not get rewarded for improving air quality or tackling climate change. UK government regulation of electricity grids both enables financialisation and forecloses opportunities to manage the infrastructure for wider environmental and public benefit. Nonetheless, the addition of smart devices to this network – the ‘smart grid’ – opens up an opportunity for common ownership of the infrastructure. Transforming the smart grid into commons necessitates deep structural reform to the entire architecture of infrastructure regulation in the UK. 本文探讨了电力基础设施金融化与将关键城市系统纳入共同所有权的努力之间的紧张关系。它着眼于英国电力监管和电子移动的新形势，研究了电网所有权如何变得金融化，以及为什么导致这种金融化的经济假设受到质疑。智能电表和电动汽车等新技术为城市提供了解决空气质量差和温室气体排放问题的新工具。 电网是促使达成上述效果的关键基础设施，但运营这些基础设施的公司不会因改善空气质量或应对气候变化而获得回报。英国政府对电网的监管既能促成金融化，也能破坏管理基础设施以实现更广泛的环境和公共利益的机会。尽管如此，为该网络添加智能设备即“智能电网”，为基础设施的共同所有权开辟了机会。 将智能电网转变为共有电网，这需要对英国基础设施监管的整个架构进行深入的结构改革。