1 INTRODUCTION
17
strongly suggests that the barriers and challenges facing today’s policymakers have changed, the surrounding politics really has not. Politicians
are still faced with vested-interest problems (even if some of them have
changed since 2014) and they still mostly seem to be solving problems as
they appear rather than thinking beyond the horizon. With the costs of
renewable energy continuing to drop, second-stage challenges to renewables will continue to hit ever more countries and make the international
dimension to renewables ever more obvious.
Notes
1. Even with negative prices, the marginal costs of fossil-fuel consumption are
not zero as they still require storage and transport, not to mention the
environmental costs.
2. Regarding creative destruction, see Schumpeter (1942). Regarding the role
of vested interests in preventing change, see Olson (1982).
3. This summarizes what is known as the pluralist school of public opinion.
Other representative works include Nincic (1988), Jentleson (1992). The
older elitist school of public opinion holds that public opinion is moody,
unstable, often incoherent, but also subject to elite molding if not manipulation, and ultimately therefore is not a constraint on political elites. For
representative works from this older school, see Lippmann (1925), Almond
(1950), Ginsberg (1986).
4. For an account showing that the Capitalist Development State in Japan was
captured by vested interests in the early 1970s, see Katz (1998).
5. Japan’s grid is divided into two incompatible parts: Eastern Japan, including
Tokyo, uses power with a frequency of 50 Hz, while western Japan,
including Osaka and Nagoya, uses 60 Hz, with 1.2 GW of conversion
capacity between the two regions by 2015 and more planned.
6. 電力広域的運営推進機関 (denryoku k¯ okiteki unei suishin kikan) Regarding
the OCCTO, see OCCTO (2020).
7. The president of Softbank, Son Masayoshi, has proposed a Northeast Asian
super-grid that would link Japan, Korea, and China, with vast wind farms
in Mongolia (Asia International Grid Connection Study Group 2017).
17
strongly suggests that the barriers and challenges facing today’s policymakers have changed, the surrounding politics really has not. Politicians
are still faced with vested-interest problems (even if some of them have
changed since 2014) and they still mostly seem to be solving problems as
they appear rather than thinking beyond the horizon. With the costs of
renewable energy continuing to drop, second-stage challenges to renewables will continue to hit ever more countries and make the international
dimension to renewables ever more obvious.
Notes
1. Even with negative prices, the marginal costs of fossil-fuel consumption are
not zero as they still require storage and transport, not to mention the
environmental costs.
2. Regarding creative destruction, see Schumpeter (1942). Regarding the role
of vested interests in preventing change, see Olson (1982).
3. This summarizes what is known as the pluralist school of public opinion.
Other representative works include Nincic (1988), Jentleson (1992). The
older elitist school of public opinion holds that public opinion is moody,
unstable, often incoherent, but also subject to elite molding if not manipulation, and ultimately therefore is not a constraint on political elites. For
representative works from this older school, see Lippmann (1925), Almond
(1950), Ginsberg (1986).
4. For an account showing that the Capitalist Development State in Japan was
captured by vested interests in the early 1970s, see Katz (1998).
5. Japan’s grid is divided into two incompatible parts: Eastern Japan, including
Tokyo, uses power with a frequency of 50 Hz, while western Japan,
including Osaka and Nagoya, uses 60 Hz, with 1.2 GW of conversion
capacity between the two regions by 2015 and more planned.
6. 電力広域的運営推進機関 (denryoku k¯ okiteki unei suishin kikan) Regarding
the OCCTO, see OCCTO (2020).
7. The president of Softbank, Son Masayoshi, has proposed a Northeast Asian
super-grid that would link Japan, Korea, and China, with vast wind farms
in Mongolia (Asia International Grid Connection Study Group 2017).