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

Stability and transformation in the electricity system 115
visions of pioneers 42 , later on distribution companies become more
strongly involved in solar energy in order to reach CO2 and renewable
energy targets set in the environmental action plan;
– The PV network has emerged relatively bottom-up in the Netherlands, a
PV group (1991/92) and later platform (1994/95) was founded to discuss
the scope for development and implementation of PV. In its application
phase PV demands the collaboration of various actors as the systems are
currently mostly integrated in housing projects. This formed the basis for
the PV covenant that was in 1997 concluded between PV R&D groups,
consultancy firms, energy companies, real estate developers and
architects. In this sense the PV network was structured by the conditions
needed for implementation, and less by the funding provided by
government as was the case for wind, although the new formulated PV
program of 1997 with doubled budgets relative to the previous program
was in incentive;
– At the demand side, Greenpeace plays a role through its Solaris project,
that aims to generated large scale demand for PV modules, based on the
assumption that large scale production will significantly drive costs
down;
– Dutch industry has played a mixed role in PV development. Shell Solar is
involved and had significant production capacity but closed down its
production facility for PV modules in Helmond in 2002 and shifted
production to Gelsenkirchen, Germany. Philips is involved in inverter
production and Akzo Nobel in R&D on thin-film technology and
production;
– Oil companies such as Shell and BP increasingly are becoming energy
companies that expect a large potential for PV technology in the medium
to long term. Shell Solar was, through its subsidiary R&S among the first
industries to enter the PV-platform, in 1999 BP joined through its
subsidiary SolarNed (Van Mierlo, 2002: 301).
An interesting policy development took place for photovoltaic technology in
1997 when the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs published its vision on
sustainable energy in “Renewable Energy – Advancing Power” (EZ, 1997).
In this document, photovoltaic technology was considered to be the most
important option for electricity generation in the long term, and could be
expected to break through from 2020 on. Efforts were thus concentrating on
providing a path facilitating and preparing for this breakthrough. The
document also provided the starting point for the set up of a PV covenant
between various actors involved in the production and use of PV modules.
42 Activities of these energy companies can partly be explained by the strong involvement of
pioneer Daey Ouwens in his work at the province of North-Holland (Knoppers, 2000).