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

80 Chapter 4
improving the system and worked “to decrease outside influences so they
could acquire greater control over elements that might have destabilized
their rule. (They) achieved closure partly by encouraging the creation of
conservative inventions, such as steadily improving steam-turbine
generators, which originated within the system and reinforced the authority
held by the existing elites” (Hirsh, 1999: 3). While the evolution of the
electricity system can be traced back as based on a certain logic related to
the characteristics of dominant technological and organisational forms, an
ascendant path could only emerge through the way these forms became
aligned through processes of institution building by influential networks of
actors in policy fields as well as in the fields of knowledge, market and civil
society.
4.3 The shift from coal to gas in the fossil base of Dutch
electricity generation
The Dutch electricity system is predominantly based on the combustion of
fossil fuels for the production of electricity. The geographical conditions are
ill suited for the production of hydropower and this option is virtually nonexistent.
Geological conditions provided for coal and gas as a local input for
power plants. In the Netherlands thermal power plants dominate the
production of electricity. Until around 1965 mainly coal is used as input for
power plants. With the discovery of the large Slochteren field, Dutch natural
gas becomes available for the production of electricity from the beginning of
the sixties and the share of coal drops in electricity generation. Natural gas
has become the main fossil fuel in electricity generation as is shown in
Figure 4.2, which gives an overview of the fuel base of the Dutch electricity
system. Crucial for this changeover to gas was the creation of an institutional
framework for the exploitation, development and use of gas and the
development of a master plan for a nationwide gas pipeline infrastructure
that would connect all private households to the gas grid within ten years
(Arentsen and Künneke, 2003; Correljé and Verbong, 2004). Gasunie, a
public-private company negotiated between the Dutch state, Exxon and
Shell, became the principal actor in the coordination of gas supply and
demand. The institutional framework for gas and the associated government
resource use policy also directly impacted the power sector’s resource base.
The initial idea of gas as a transition resource in anticipation of a shift to
nuclear energy led to unlimited use of low-priced gas in the power sector.
The oil crises changed perceptions, expectations and policy: now prudent use
of gas through a small field policy was declared, leading to re-orientation of
strategies towards coal. When the effects of the oil crises subsided and the