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

Evolution of decentral cogeneration in the Netherlands 131
remuneration tariffs, the share of installations dimensioned on heat demand
increased with as a result more electricity produced for the grid.
5.3 A perspective on institutional change
For understanding the development of decentral cogeneration we use a
perspective in which decentral cogeneration is perceived as the emergence
and spread of an alternative technological and organisational form in the
larger context of the electricity system. In the early 1970s steam turbine
technology, the central station electricity system, and organisation through
regional monopolies were technological and organisational forms firmly
rooted in the electricity system. The structure, practices and exchange
relationships had been stable and taken for granted in the post-war electricity
system and the main concern was the security of supply. The prevailing
institutional logic, defined as a set of socially constructed assumptions,
values, and beliefs (Sine and David, 2003: 185), was based on a ‘growth
dynamics’ paradigm based on increasing efficiency through expansion
(allowing more efficient, larger scale, turbines) in which the system derived
its legitimacy from enabling economic growth through expansion and
cultivation of energy supply and consumption (i.e. energy growth equates
economic growth equates progress) and its credibility through providing
stable and affordable prices for all. In the light of high energy growth rates
the dominant expectation was that nuclear power was 1) a perfect fit to allow
further expansion of the system, 2) could increase stability 4 of the system by
allowing even more stable prices and reducing fossil dependency, and 3) was
a good match to the existing engineering and economic principles of the
system.
This institutional logic, which synchronised action within the electricity
system, also strongly affected the nature of the linkages with broader
systems in society: the knowledge infrastructure; the policy system
(involving politics and policy); the economic system; and society at large.
The extent of institutionalisation of the nature of these linkages is analysed
elsewhere, and we suffice with an overview of a typology of these linkages,
presented in Table 5.1 (in the first column). The main point here is that a
high degree of institutionalisation can be observed for the linkages of these
areas to the electricity system in the early 1970s, examples are presented in
the second column of Table 5.1, such as for the structure, R&D direction,
4 Nuclear power offered lower variable costs than fossil based power, high investment costs
were absorbed through the monopoly model, and it was expected to reduce geopolitical
dependence on volatile regions.