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

Evolution of decentral cogeneration in the Netherlands 157
In comparison to overall less prosperous uptake of cogeneration in other
European countries those specific institutional change processes provide an
explanation for these differences in uptake. This also leads to the conclusion
that gas turbine development was a necessary but not sufficient condition for
the uptake of decentral cogeneration. One counter argument could be that the
Netherlands witnesses a gas infrastructure and gas abundance that has been
conducive for the uptake of decentral cogeneration. We agree that
availability of gas has facilitated the uptake of decentral cogeneration but
would argue that this can not explain the nature of the institutional change
processes that have occurred and were decisive for the creation of an
alternative competing decentral design to the central station electricity
system in the Netherlands.
A more detailed look at the evolution of decentral cogeneration leads to the
following conclusions. First of all we need to stress the extent of change that
had to take place in order to make the large uptake of cogeneration possible.
This involved changes in routines of a range of actors, radical organisational
changes within the electricity sector (from supply orientation to client
orientation, and from regional monopolies to market organisation, among
others), and radical policy change within the departments of environmental
and economic affairs (the theme and goal oriented target group policy). It
involved changes in energy management routines in several adopter groups,
ranging from process industries, to horticulture, to health care organisations,
swimming pools, and hotels (and supported by the long term agreements on
energy efficiency in a range of sectors). It also involved the emergence of a
strong set of intermediaries, who provided information about the potential
(relative advantage) of cogeneration; who could relate prospective adopters
to earlier adopters; who could reduce the complexity of the decision to be
taken; and who could convince potential adopters regarding the feasibility
and compatibility of cogeneration within their existing production and
service processes 33 . And it involved the emergence of a good match between
technological and organisational form (the joint-venture) that distributed
risks and benefits and reduced transaction costs in a way beneficial to
collaborating parties. Overall these change processes benefited from the
improved cost conditions through fundamental changes in the rules applying
for remuneration and grid connection and through continuous policy support
schemes. Subsidies and fiscal investment measures were a necessary
condition (here we agree with earlier research from a.o. Blok, 1991; 1993;
Blok and Turkenburg, 1994; Beeldman, 1995; Elzenga et al., 2001) but, we
33 Here, the categorisation of Rogers (1995: 207) of perceived attributes of innovations is
applied.