Determinación de los Usuarios Externos Potenciales.

It is worth, however, considering how alternative narratives of energy policy fared over this time. A review of articles from the journal ‘Energy Policy’ in the mid-1980s

confirms that, while the UK was going through the early processes of energy marketisation, wider governance questions used more often to run alongside analyses of more narrowly defined technical questions (Lehmann and Hough 1983; Chesshire 1986; Webb 1985; Cooper 1987). What is apparent from this debate is that, certainly in the 1980s and early 1990s, there was still clear ability and willingness to question the emergent PEPP from a critical perspective. This critical debate fell away over the course of the 1990s as political consensus was maintained, and even expanded internationally, and as energy was increasingly understood as a secure, rather than politically contested, area.

The first common thread within this debate revolved around calls for a greater role for the state in energy governance through the provision of a national ‘strategic framework’ and ‘national management of the energy sector’ as opposed to the continued withdrawal of the state apparatus from the energy sector (Ezra 1983; Keegan 1985; Hope et al 1986; Rodriguez 1987; Fells and Lucas 1992). The problem that was being identified at the time, to which we will return in chapter six, was that even as government receded further from a central management role in energy, exacerbated by the dissolution of the Department of Energy in 1992, questions of how to provide policy that addressed national collective issues still needed to be considered. One specific problem identified was that energy, as a sector requiring notoriously long-term investment planning, would need a forward looking, co-ordinated, national approach if sufficient investment were to be made for national security of supply (Owens 1986: 5). This was considered a particular difficulty for the PEPP given the Conservatives stance as ‘anti-planning’ (Stern 1987: 501).

Delegation of responsibility to ‘the markets’, and a ‘do it yourself’ approach to environmental regulation, was also considered at the time to have potential consequences for the ability of energy policy to respond to social considerations, particularly the environment (Hope et al 1986; Cooper 1987). This viewpoint was expressed well by Owens in his 1986 article:

(m)arket forces also have no way of deciding the weight to be attached to the death of a snail darter compared to, say, the death of a worker at an accident at a nuclear power station (Hope et al 1987: 6)

This is an argument which has come to form a significant part of the debate on energy policy in the late 2000s specifically with regard to the inability of the market model to

make qualitative decisions about sustainable energy (cf. Mitchell 2008; Giddens 2009; Scrase et al 2009).

This critical debate also raised concerns about creating an institutional framework for energy governance with monetarist principles and targets, particularly aimed around reducing the PSBR, at its heart. It was feared that one of the outcomes of such a framework would be that Government would not be able to meet its real energy objectives which critics understood as still, ultimately, being the secure and affordable supply of energy (Webb 1985; Stern 1987; Rodriguez 1987). Rodriguez further specified that by making energy policy about the achievement of a competitive market in energy, governance was no longer even designed with specific energy objectives in mind (Rodriguez 1987: 464).

There were other concerns expressed about the consequences of not debating energy, and energy policy, publically or in other words of emerging ‘deliberative’ depoliticisation (Hope et al 1986; Stern 1987). In particular, Jonathan Stern had noted the absence of any energy coverage in the 1987 General Election campaign, the drop in political debate about energy policy since 1979, and the lack of up-to-date published energy projections. His concern was that there would be a lack of public acceptance and awareness of important decision on major energy projects (Stern 1987: 498). It was later observed that the relative absence in political debate about energy had ultimately resulted in a lack of awareness, under New Labour, of international energy events and the way in which the energy environment was developing (Blackhurst 2004). The findings of this analysis, in chapter four, would support this conclusion.

This debate could also be seen as extending to questions of energy affordability, previously a core objective of energy policy. Clearly under the Welfare State questions of access for all households had been paramount. Although the Conservatives did stick with some welfare policies to help poorer households afford energy, such as hardship payments in bad weather, the question of affordability did not go away despite falling international energy prices. Whilst Conservative critics of welfare provisions continued to oppose them pointing to the ‘paternalism’ involved, many households continued in ‘energy poverty’ (Helm et al 1989: 55).

One method of dealing with those that sought to challenge the new paradigm, and some of these academics had been involved under the previous paradigm, was simply, as with the miner’s strike, to replace them or otherwise exclude them from policymaking circles. This is where Thatcher’s ‘one of us’ policy came into its own. A specific example of this was the replacement of Derek Ezra as head of the National Coal Board (Helm 2003: 77). Thatcher had labelled Ezra “an appeaser” (Thatcher 1995: 342 in Helm 2003: 77), and Lawson had doubted his commercial credentials (Helm 2003: 342), but there might have been more to their desire to replace him. Ezra had been a keen supporter of a greater role for the state in energy governance and was also supporter of political action to prevent further climate change (Ezra 1983). Much of what Ezra was writing about in 1983 is still relevant within climate and energy debates today.

The replacement of key personnel was one core part of the Conservative strategy to disperse alternative narratives within the policymaking debate. Another method might be considered in the support that much of the British media gave to the Conservative Administration, certainly for much of the 1980s (Hay 1996). Stern’s observations, above, about the lack of discussion of energy matters within the 1987 election debates, or ‘deliberative’ depoliticisation, may well have been underpinned by low(er) energy prices in comparison, certainly, to the 1970s. To the degree that low energy prices have often equated to public interest, those, such as Ezra, who supported changes to energy policy to recognise social issues, such as climate change, did not at this time enjoy wide public interest or support.

Conclusion  

Conservatives had claimed ‘revolution’ in terms of their redesign of economic governance. Certainly, with regard to energy, it was widely claimed that the reforms being carried out constituted a radical break with recent history as well as something unseen elsewhere in the Western world (de Oliveira and MacKerron 1992: 157; see also Rodriguez 1987; Helm 2003; Thomas 2006). The degree to which this new policy paradigm, the PEPP, had become institutionalised within the UK was, however, later underpinned by the international expansion of ‘market’ energy – to Australia, the US, the EU, Eastern Europe and, often under the advise of the World Bank, to a number of other developing countries (de Oliveira & MacKerron 1992: 157). By the early 2000s,

some experts had come to believe the international energy economy had been fundamentally transformed over the 1980s and 1990s by the expansion of market institutions, and commodity and financial markets (Egenhofer and Legge 2001: 3; Mitchell et al 2001: 176; see also Hayes and Victor 2006). Pro-market energy originally ‘pioneered’ by the UK, and Chile, had spread around the world (Thomas 2006: 583; Scrase and McKerron 2009: 5).

It might be worth posing questions, however, about how the emerging lack of political deliberation and contestation of energy policy, and the decline in physical institutions of governance, compares with previous periods of relative silence on energy. As Derek Ezra has pointed out in his book on energy policy, which takes on historical lenses, debate about energy has tended to ebb and flow over time (Ezra 1983: 202; see also Leaver 2005; McGowan 2008). This ebb and flow has been historically related to periods when energy has been considered to be ‘in crisis’, as in the 1970s, and this perception is often related to the ascendance of energy prices. It might also be suggested that ‘secretised’ depoliticisation has also played an historic role in the degree to which publics did not engage regularly with questions of energy and its supply. Because decisions about ‘defending’ access to oil have, over time, tended to be made ‘behind closed doors’, publics appear to have little idea of the cost of defending access to oil and gas nor of details in terms of the role Britain has played (cf. Keohane 1984; Bromley 1991; Painter 1992).

CHAPTER  4:    

The  Pro-­Market  Energy  Policy  Paradigm  2000-­03:  Challenge  and   Compromise  

Introduction  

By the time New Labour took office in 1997 a new energy governance system, the ‘Pro- Market Energy Policy Paradigm’ (PEPP), had been established despite some difficulties experienced, particularly in the early to mid 1980s. This chapter will open with the claim that despite the change of government, which could theoretically have presented a firm test for the new paradigm, the PEPP did not markedly shift. The period from 2000 to 2003, which is to be analysed here, is understood as one largely of continuity in energy governance. This analysis of UK energy governance over this time period will be supplemented, as with the analyses of the two subsequent time periods, with further theoretical analysis in chapter seven.

Ideological commitment to the PEPP, despite Labour’s social roots, was apparent from the start. Judged on Labour’s first term in office it could be argued that the PEPP came to represent an even more depoliticised, in ‘technocratic’ and ‘marketised’ terms, system than that under the Conservatives. Furthermore the PEPP was increasingly underpinned by the internationalisation of the UK energy model which had been taking place in the US, Europe and other developing countries, often via conditionalities associated with World Bank, and IMF, lending schemes. This was, importantly, supported in turn by the demise of the principal ‘challenger’ in terms of political models with the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent decisions by ex-Soviet states, most significantly the Russian Federation, to adopt a process of privatisation and liberalisation in their energy sectors.

Conversely, however, Labour’s first term in office can also be marked down as a period of mounting challenges to pro-market energy emanating, largely from outside the UK energy establishment.47 This period bore witness to the ‘Enron scandal’, the California energy crisis, rising energy prices, and a related but brief spate of fuel protests in the winter of 2000. In addition, and importantly, the Government was becoming

47  _{The  energy  establishment  is  taken  here  to  be  those  in  Ofgem  and  the  DTI  directly  involved  in  energy}  

analysis  and  policymaking,  as  well  as  those  third  parties,  such  as  Ernst  &  Young,  who  were  chosen  to   provide  extra  analysis  and  advice.  

increasingly aware that UK North Sea assets were depleting at such as rate that the time horizon within which the UK would start importing oil and gas again was narrowing quickly. Not least, this period also saw growing commitment to carbon dioxide reduction targets alongside emerging evidence of underperformance in this area, particularly evident in the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) report of 2000 (RCEP 2000).

In response to the realisation that the UK would become an importer once more and to the critique of climate policy, Tony Blair announced that the Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU), which reported to in this instance to ‘Number Ten’, would conduct a review of UK energy policy. This review represented quite a challenge to the PEPP, on a number of levels. However between the issuance of the Energy Policy Review in 2002 and the production of the Energy White Paper in 2003 many of the more challenging suggestions had been omitted. The 2003 White Paper did, however, commit energy policy for the first time to two new, separate ‘social’ goals: those of lowering carbon dioxide emissions and of reducing energy poverty. This appeared, on the surface, to be a change to the objectives of energy policy, one of the ‘levels’ of the PEPP. The conundrum that this chapter seeks to answer is, however, how the objectives of energy policy could seemingly change without much other accompanying signs of paradigm shift.

This contradiction will, in part, be explained by arguing that certain effects of both ‘technocratic’ and ‘marketised’ depoliticisation led to quite a high degree of resistance to other aspects of paradigm change. In addition, carbon dioxide reduction targets were not legally binding and were seen within parts of the Energy Directorat and Ofgem, the two bodies most responsible for devising and carrying out energy policy, as more indicative than necessarily binding, or even realistic. Furthermore, the 2003 White Paper proposed that the new objectives could and should be met using existing methods enshrined within the PEPP.

1.     New  Labour,  Normalised  Neoliberalism  and  Internationalisation  of