This Climate Week NYC 2026 event will bring together trade unionists, researchers, and movement allies to examine the growing international momentum behind the “Public Pathway”, a union-led approach to energy transition based on public ownership, democratic planning, public finance, and energy as a public good. The discussion will situate current energy debates within the wider global crisis of neoliberal “green growth,” where transition policy has too often relied on private investors, de-risking schemes, and market incentives that fail to deliver universal access, decent work, or rapid system transformation.
The panel will highlight emerging struggles and proposals from Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and North America, asking what it means for unions to reclaim energy systems from a market-led approach and rebuild them around social need, sovereignty, and democratic control. Speakers will discuss examples such as Mexico’s post-neoliberal electricity agenda, public energy debates in Latin America, South-South cooperation, and the role of unions in defending public utilities while pushing them toward a stronger public-goods mandate.
The event will also ask how international solidarity can move beyond statements and become practical cooperation: shared research, political education, worker-to-worker exchanges, and coordinated responses to privatization, trade/investment pressures, and climate finance models that weaken public systems. The goal is to make the Public Pathway visible during Climate Week as a serious global alternative: not simply “more public ownership” in the abstract, but a concrete strategy for energy democracy, just transition, and development led by workers and communities.
Speakers:
- Ethan Young, Public Services International (PSI) North America Subregional Coordinator
- Brian Kamanzi, Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, Researcher
- Andres Chiriboga, I3t - Industry, Infrastructures, and Innovation for Strategic Transformation, Director of Finance for Industrial Transformation
- Mathew Lawrence, Common Wealth, Founder and Director
- Johanna Bozuwa, Climate and Community Institute, Executive Director
- Lala Peñaranda (moderator), Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, Latin America Coordinator
CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies
25 W 43rd St 19th floor
New York, NY 10036, USA