4 April 2024

09:00 – 09:45

Amphi 1

Martin Chick

Martin Chick is Professor of Economic History at the University of Edinburgh. He has written three books to date: Industrial Policy in Britain, 1945-51 (CUP, 1998); Electricity and Energy Policy in Britain, France and the United States since 1945 (Elgar 2007) ; and Changing Times: Economics and Policies in Britain since 1951.(OUP 2020). He is currently writing a book on the interaction of law and economics  in the use of the seas.

How has the role of time changed in government energy policies and energy markets since 1945?

This presentation draws attention to the central and changing role played by time in the development of energy policies since 1945. Not only is the temporal structure of electricity demand crucial to determining the investment requirements of any electricity supply system, but the imbalance between the high upfront sunk costs of much electricity generating investment, and the subsequent low operating costs, also raises substantial questions as to how the initial capital costs will be recovered over time. If anything, this problem of capital recovery is becoming ever more pressing, not least as an increasing share of electricity supply   comes from renewable sources. None of these problems are new, but what has changed is the institutional framework in which they are considered. Using economic history, and concentrating on the cases of the UK, France and the United States, this presentation underlines the extent to which the institutional arrangements in which new electricity   investment is considered has changed considerably over time. From a pre-1940 world in which governments tended to use concessionary approaches to investment, to the ‘Golden Age’ from 1945-1975 when public ownership and regulation prevailed, to our more familiar ‘neoliberal’ world of privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation, on each occasion the changed institutional context has presented fresh challenges both to the development of  national and international energy policy, and also to the role played by time within those policies.