Martin Chicks book is a major economic and historical study of the development of electricity and energy policy in Britain, France and the United States since 1945. Using newly available archival material the author draws important comparisons between these countries and includes all of the fuel and power industries. Among the issues covered within this book are: nationalization and privatization; regulation, deregulation and liberalization; marginal cost pricing; investment appraisal; the OPEC oil price hikes of the 1970s; the European Coal and Steel Community; domestic and international threats to national energy security; the electricity blackouts in California; the efforts of the European Commission to promote competition in national and transnational electricity markets; and the influence of history on current discussions of energy policy. The book blends economic theory with historical evidence and is as interested in the political factors affecting the implementation of theory as in the theory itself.
It will be of interest to all students and scholars of environmental studies, politics, economics, business and industrial history, as well as to anyone interested in placing the current debates on electricity and energy policy in their historical perspective.
Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Shifting from Coal to Oil: What Price Security? 3. The European Coal and Steel Community 4. Moving the Margin to the Centre: Pricing Electricity 5. Electricity Investment: Rewarding the Past, Discounting the Future 6. Deregulation, Privatisation and Liberalisation 7. Conclusion Bibliography Index