Innovation and institutional change: the transition to a sustainable ...

98 Chapter 4
In conclusion, the introduction of the gas turbine and hybrid forms of gas
and steam turbines opened up opportunities to shape ideas of energy saving,
but also opened up opportunities to introduce more efficient combined heat
and power production. The electricity industry was more or less forced to
broaden their task of electricity producer towards the distribution of heat,
due to general climate towards energy saving and increasing government
pressure. Whereas the electricity industry was not very inclined to engage in
heat production and distribution it did broaden the traditional electricity
focus of the dominant regime and opened up the regime towards taken into
account issues such as energy saving and environmental impacts of
electricity production.
4.8 The development of coal technology
The second oil crisis intensified the strategies for energy saving and resource
diversification. Increasing urgency of the energy crisis cumulated in two
significant developments in this period. Nuclear energy became unfeasible
due to societal concern amplified by the Chernobyl crisis. Now, coal was
seen as the only alternative to oil and gas in the medium term. It was deemed
possible that in the coming 20 to 30 years coal would become the single
source for electricity generation (TK, 1979: 139). Secondly, environmental
concerns, apart from the finiteness of energy resources, played only a limited
role in technological development for electricity generation at the beginning
of the eighties. With the closure of nuclear energy as a technological path for
electricity generation, expansion of coal emerged as the favoured alternative
to gas-fired power plants. Several conventional power plants were
reconfigured to the use of coal, and plans for the construction of new coalfired
plants were approved. Moreover, in order to reduce environmental
impacts of coal 21 , a coal research plan is set up to develop new coal
21 Environmental concerns regarding the emissions from coal combustion increased during
the eighties. While in the course of the sixties policies were formulated to control air
pollution in the Netherlands, and especially the formation of smog. Whereas the Air
Pollution Act was concluded in 1970, specific emission standards for fossil fired plants,
first for SO2 and later for NOx, were only introduced at the beginning of the eighties
(Dinkelman, 1995). From the 80s on the effects of acidification became an important
environmental constraint for the electricity sector also in the light of the shift towards coal.
Effects of acid rain became visible through the deteriorated state of forests and lakes,
especially in Nordic countries where the assimilative capacity of the soil for acid
substances is relatively low. More importantly, in this period also the scientific community
moved to consensus on labelling the emissions of SO2, NH3 and NOx and transboundary
transport of these emissions as major factors for acid rain and public attention for the
harmful environmental effects of these emissions rose (Dinkelman, 1995).