Resources This book is available in Oxford Scholarship Online - view abstracts and keywords at book and chapter level.
Related Categories
|
|
|
Energy, the State, and the Market
British Energy Policy since 1979
Revised Edition
Dieter Helm
492 pages
|
numerous figures and tables
|
234x156mm
978-0-19-927074-3
|
Paperback
|
19 February 2004
|
|
This item is printed to order. Items which are printed to order are normally despatched and charged within 5-10 days.
|
|
|
- The book suggests how to solve the current energy crisis.
- It is a detailed case study of the wider question of government intervention in issues such as security of supply and climate change, and the limits to competiton and market forces in energy, with applications across the economy.
- The revised edition includes a range of new material, including a new chapter on the White Paper on a low-carbon economy and updated discussions on nuclear power (to incorporate the 2003 Nuclear White Paper), price reviews, and emissions trading.
New to this edition - The revised paperback edition includes a new chapter on the White Paper on a low-carbon economy and updated discussions on nuclear power, to incorporate the 2003 Nuclear White Paper, price reviews, and emissions trading.
The transformation of Britain's energy policy in the last two decades has been
more radical than any such change in developed economies. Since 1979 the great state energy monopolies created after the Second World War have been privatised and made subject to competition. Images of Arthur Scargill and the miners' strike of the 1980s remain vivid, but what effect has the new market philosophy had on Britain's energy industries?
Since 1979 the National Coal Board, British Gas, and the Central Electricity Generating Board have all been broken up. Energy trading, electricity pools, auctions, and futures markets first developed, but they failed to solve the old energy policy problems of security of supply and network integrity, and the new ones of the environment and reliance on gas. The government introduced a new regulatory regime as a temporary
necessity but regulation did not wither away, rather it grew to be more pervasive. Changing the ownership of the industries did not reduce the government's involvement, it simply changed its form.
The 1980s and 1990s were years of energy surpluses and low fossil-fuel prices. There was little need to invest, and much of the investment in the so-called dash for gas was artificially stimulated. The new owners sweated the assets, and engaged in major financial engineering. Takeovers consolidated the industry into a smaller number of dominant firms. As investment priorities became more urgent, with the environmental pressures of climate change and the gradual switch to imported gas, the market philosophy was found wanting. Energy policy could not rely solely on the
market. And it is the government which finds itself responsible for resolving the core issues of energy policy.
Helm's book tells this story. It is a major study of the new market approach to energy policy in Britain since 1979. It describes the miners' strike, the privatisations of the gas, electricity, nuclear generation, and coal industries, and looks at events such as the dash for gas, regulatory failures in setting monopoly prices, and the takeovers and the consolidations of the late 1990s. Helm sets out the achievements of the new market philosophy, but also analyses why it has ultimately failed to turn energy industries into normal commodity businesses.
The revised paperback edition includes a new chapter on the White Paper on a
low-carbon economy and updated discussions on nuclear power, to incorporate the 2003 Nuclear White Paper, price reviews, and emissions trading.Readership: Academics in economics, politics, and environmental studies; Government officials involved in the energy sector, privatization, and regulation; Energy sector executives and politicians.
|
|
|
Dieter Helm, New College, Oxford
|
|
|
1: Introduction
2: The Inheritance: State Ownership, Monopoly, and Planning
3: First Steps Towards the Market Philosophy
4: Thatcher and Scargill: Getting Off the Labour Standard
5: The Nuclear Option in the 1980s: Security of Supply and National Energy Independence
6: Missed Opportunity: British Gas Privatization
7: Electricity Privatization
8: The Transition to Competition in the Electricity Industry
9: Preparing for the End of British Coal: Privatization and Decline
10: Nuclear Privatization and the End of the Nuclear Dream
11: Regulatory Failure and Financial Engineering: The RECs' First Review
12: Takeover Mania and Capital Market Competition
13: The Break-Up of British Gas
14: Domestic Competition in Gas and Electricity
15: Regulatory Reform and New Labour
16: Energy Sources, Diversity, and Long-Term Security of Supply
17: NETA and the Consolidation of Generation
18: Price Reviews Again: Asset-Sweating or Investment?
19: The Environment Moves Centre Stage
20: The European Dimension
21: Energy Policy Revisited
22: A Low-carbon Economy
23: Reinventing Energy Policy
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
|
|
