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

128 Chapter 5
technological and institutional configuration of the system compared to the
central station model.
The main topic in this chapter is how, why and which change processes were
set in motion enabling the fast rise of decentral cogeneration within the
Dutch electricity system. Data sources include an extensive body of research
on the development of cogeneration, primary data regarding the
development of cogeneration capacity and production, earlier research of the
author (Arentsen, Hofman and Marquart, 2000; Hofman and Marquart,
2001), and interviews with key actors. The main purpose is not to repeat the
multitude of studies analysing the development of cogeneration but foremost
to apply and develop a specific analytical perspective. This perspective is
explained in section 3, following the presentation of basic data regarding the
development of cogeneration in section 2. Sections 4, 5 and 6 focus on the
emergence, fast rise and stagnation of cogeneration respectively. In section 7
the analytical perspective is applied and further refined based on the analysis
of main patterns of change in decentral cogeneration. The chapter ends with
a concluding section.
5.2 Basic data on the development of cogeneration in the
Netherlands
As Figure 5.1 shows the development of decentral cogeneration has a
distinct character with a rather stable share to the middle of the eighties in
the total mix of electricity production capacity in the Netherlands. This
changed towards the end of the eighties as the share of decentral generation
steadily grew with annual investments of around 60 to 200 MWe in the
period 1985-1994 and of around 400 to 625 MWe in the period 1995-1999.
From 2000 investments in decentral cogeneration stagnated and some
installations were shut down. This pattern is even more pronounced for the
amount of electricity generated based on cogeneration. Figure 5.2 shows an
accelerating increase in production through cogeneration from the middle of
the eighties and Figure 5.3 shows the increase the share of decentral
cogeneration in domestic electricity production from 10% at the end of the
seventies towards 36% in 1999 and 2000, with a drop to 31% from 2001 to
2003.
A look at the nature of the technology used for cogeneration shows a shift
from larger scale steam turbines towards combined cycles, diverse scale gas
turbines and small gas engines. In terms of capacity combined cycles start to
take the dominant share in the course of the nineties (Rijkers et al., 2002).