1 INTRODUCTION
3
This book is about stage two: the challenge of overcoming limits
to the electricity grid to allow for variable or intermittent electricity
produced by renewables to move from being a niche source of power
to being a mainstay that increasingly replaces fossil and nuclear fueled
sources. Stage two challenges and opportunities include the need for
extensive grid development, especially increasing tie-lines among regional
and national grids, smart grid development and deployment, increasing
electricity storage infrastructure, accelerating the emerging hydrogen
economy, and promoting electricity market liberalization for facilitating
the entry of smaller renewable energy producers into electricity markets
while decoupling control (and even ownership) of the grid from previously incumbent (often monopoly) generators of electricity, who mostly
rely on fossil and nuclear fueled sources of electricity generation.
Explaining National Variation
This volume focuses on how the adoption of renewable energy technology is inhibited or promoted by three social factors: vested interests,
public opinion, and strong states. First, there is the presence of vested
interests in the form of incumbent industry stakeholders who have an
incentive to try to use their political and structural influence to stop upand-coming newer and more efficient industries from displacing them
through what Joseph Schumpeter calls “waves of creative destruction.” 2
New industries rise when they provide more efficient ways of providing
goods and services, and they fall when what was once technologically
revolutionary becomes commonplace and obsolescent and new industries
based on new technologies arise that offer more efficient ways to provide
goods and services (including new and better goods and services). This
produces waves of industrial rise and fall: innovation, stagnation, “creative
destruction.” Periods of stagnation correspond to what could be called a
silting up the political economy as vested interests expand their influence
over government, and use that influence to stop rising industries from
destroying older industries through competition in the marketplace (Moe
2015; Olson 1982).
Vested interests are thus currently an inhibiting factor for renewable
energy, as existing energy producers, especially the fossil fuel and nuclear
industries, can, and have in many instances, exercised political influence
and even structural influence through their control of the electricity grid
and existing electricity storage infrastructure (e.g., pump-hydro) to limit
3
This book is about stage two: the challenge of overcoming limits
to the electricity grid to allow for variable or intermittent electricity
produced by renewables to move from being a niche source of power
to being a mainstay that increasingly replaces fossil and nuclear fueled
sources. Stage two challenges and opportunities include the need for
extensive grid development, especially increasing tie-lines among regional
and national grids, smart grid development and deployment, increasing
electricity storage infrastructure, accelerating the emerging hydrogen
economy, and promoting electricity market liberalization for facilitating
the entry of smaller renewable energy producers into electricity markets
while decoupling control (and even ownership) of the grid from previously incumbent (often monopoly) generators of electricity, who mostly
rely on fossil and nuclear fueled sources of electricity generation.
Explaining National Variation
This volume focuses on how the adoption of renewable energy technology is inhibited or promoted by three social factors: vested interests,
public opinion, and strong states. First, there is the presence of vested
interests in the form of incumbent industry stakeholders who have an
incentive to try to use their political and structural influence to stop upand-coming newer and more efficient industries from displacing them
through what Joseph Schumpeter calls “waves of creative destruction.” 2
New industries rise when they provide more efficient ways of providing
goods and services, and they fall when what was once technologically
revolutionary becomes commonplace and obsolescent and new industries
based on new technologies arise that offer more efficient ways to provide
goods and services (including new and better goods and services). This
produces waves of industrial rise and fall: innovation, stagnation, “creative
destruction.” Periods of stagnation correspond to what could be called a
silting up the political economy as vested interests expand their influence
over government, and use that influence to stop rising industries from
destroying older industries through competition in the marketplace (Moe
2015; Olson 1982).
Vested interests are thus currently an inhibiting factor for renewable
energy, as existing energy producers, especially the fossil fuel and nuclear
industries, can, and have in many instances, exercised political influence
and even structural influence through their control of the electricity grid
and existing electricity storage infrastructure (e.g., pump-hydro) to limit