Spatial governance and energy transitions:
The ‘problem’ of rural electrification in
England and Wales
Fionnguala Sherry-Brennana and Peter J G Pearsonb
a Low Carbon Research Institute, Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University
b Imperial College Centre for Energy Policy & Technology (ICEPT), Imperial College London
Working Paper 2015/2
October 2015
Realising Transition Pathways
Whole systems analysis for a UK more electric low carbon energy future
Realising Transition Pathways
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Realising Transition Pathways
‘Realising Transition Pathways’ (RTP) is a UK Consortium of engineers, social scientists and policy
analysts. The consortium is managed by Professor Geoffrey Hammond of the University of Bath
and Professor Peter Pearson of Cardiff University (Co-Leaders). It includes research teams from
nine British university institutions: the Universities of Bath, Cardiff, East Anglia, Leeds,
Loughborough, Strathclyde, and Surrey, as well as Imperial College London and University
College London. The RTP Project [www.realisingtransitionpathways.org.uk] commenced in May
2012 and is sponsored by the ‘Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’ (EPSRC:
Grant EP/K005316/1). It is a renewal and development of the earlier ‘Transition Pathways’ (TP)
project, which was initially established in 2008 with the joint sponsorship of E.ON UK (the
electricity generator) and the EPSRC. This project addressed the challenge of the so-called
energy ‘trilemma’: the simultaneous delivery of low carbon, secure, and affordable energy
services for the electricity sector. It developed and applied a variety of tools and approaches to
analyse the technical feasibility, environmental impacts, economic consequences, and social
acceptability of three ‘transition pathways’ towards a UK low carbon electricity system. These
pathways explore the roles of market, government and civil society actors in the governance of
a low carbon energy transition.
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in realising a low carbon UK energy sector, including those stemming from European
developments. This project includes studies on the horizon scanning of innovative energy
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economic analysis, the estimation of investment costs of the different pathways, and the
implications of markets for investment decisions about energy technologies. Further work is
being undertaken on conceptualising, mapping and analysing ‘actor dynamics’ in the
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Realising Transition Pathways
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Spatial governance and energy transitions:
The ‘problem’ of rural electrification in England and Wales
Fionnguala Sherry-Brennana and Peter J G Pearsonb
a Low Carbon Research Institute, Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University
b Imperial College Centre for Energy Policy & Technology (ICEPT), Imperial College London
Abstract
This paper is an historical study exploring the development of rural electrification in
England and Wales, focusing on the late 1920s to 1960s. Largely through the lens of a
relational approach to energy transitions, the research examines how and why rural
electrification came to be seen as problematic. The paper examines how discourses
focused on diverse rural geographies, the importance of providing industry with electric
power, the perceived need for large-scale power generation, and the cost of electricity
distribution affected decisions about extending the electricity network to rural areas. It
explores how expectations of the rural idyll, electricity demand, arguments around
technical and economic efficiencies, and patterns of ownership of generation and
distribution combined to make provision of electricity to rural areas challenging, i.e. a
‘problem’. The period of study includes the ‘reigns’ of different national governmental
bodies; the Electricity Commissioners and the Central Electricity Board (CEB) and the
British Electricity Authority (BEA). The paper traces the impact of state, market, and
technology governance logics and the pervasive influence of an urban–industrial model
of electricity development. The paper argues for a recognition of rural electrification’s
heterogeneity, whether spatial, temporal, technological or cultural. This implies that
rather than one rural electrification ‘problem’, there are different ‘problems’. And it calls
for an appreciation that the lens through which rural electrification is viewed has
influenced and will go on influencing how each area’s ‘problem’ is constructed and
addressed.
Keywords
Electricity, energy transitions, governance, history, rural electrification, rural
geographies, technology
Introduction
The development of electricity grid infrastructure was in the past and continues to be
an important, yet contentious, topic. Previous research on the history of the British
electricity supply industry (ESI) has focused mostly on urban and industrial
development (e.g. Hannah, 1979, 1982; Hughes, 1983; Ballin, 1946; Parsons, 1939). This
paper explores electricity network development in the rural areas of England and
Wales. Electricity supply in these areas is seen as challenging, partly because of the
diverse characters of different landscapes, combined with how the land is used and the
Realising Transition Pathways
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distribution of rural populations. Activity patterns in rural areas can vary widely,
depending on the existence, or not, of local industry, which is determined partly by
agricultural and land-use differences. In comparison, industrial aggregation and greater
population densities in non-rural areas are seen as presenting fewer challenges for
electricity supply compared to rural areas.
Authors writing about rural electrification recognise the challenges of providing
electricity in rural areas as a conglomeration of economics, politics, social practices,
environmental concerns, and demography. The story of rural electrification in England
and Wales combines all these elements and has, to some degree, already been told. It
emphasises how it took decades after widespread urban provision for rural households
to receive an electricity supply. The slow pace of rural electrification across Britain was
an embarrassment compared to achievements abroad; the explanations for this
tardiness have tended to centre on economic and financial arguments based on low
rural population densities and associated low demand and consequent low returns on
potentially very expensive investments, given the high cost of distribution networks
(Electricity Commission, 1928; Hannah, 1979). The problem with this approach is that it
overlooks other factors which have come to be seen as important influences on rural
electrification.
There are several well documented case-studies of electrification in the UK (see
Hannah, 1979, 1982; Hughes, 1983; Luckin, 1990), all of which consider rural
electrification only peripherally. More in-depth rural electrification studies include
those by Moore-Colyer (2007) focusing on Wales, Brassley et al. (forthcoming) on farm
electrification, Owen (1989) on electricity distribution, and Sayer (2008, 2013) on the
socio-cultural effects of rural electrification. Within these accounts exists a recognition
of the ‘rural’ as a problem for electricity network development; collectively they
describe the protracted and often contested process of providing electricity to rural
places.
Moore-Colyer (2007, 2011) takes up some of the broader issues relating to rural
electrification. He uses a less economics-focussed analysis to look at electricity supply
in Wales (a largely rural country). He highlights the importance of health concerns,
which were addressed through various Housing Acts, increasing agricultural
mechanisation (Moore-Colyer, 2011), and changing social practices (Moore-Colyer,
2007). Through this combined perspective he describes how electricity was gradually
brought to Wales through a variety of mechanisms and processes, not all of which
stemmed directly from changes to the Electricity Acts passed by central government.
Similarly, in a significant contribution to the literature, Owen (1989) argues that rural
areas only received a supply of electricity once demand had been guaranteed and
increased to what were considered industrial levels of consumption. Yet, whilst MooreColyer pays valuable attention to detail in the story of Wales’ rural electrification, he
accepts uncritically a model of development based on large-scale generation and
distribution systems. Furthermore, whilst Owen’s argument is persuasive, it leaves the
question of how industrial levels of consumption came to be deemed so important for
rural areas.
Realising Transition Pathways
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Contemporary accounts of rural electrification do not therefore focus directly on
how it came to be so problematic and how this affected the development of electricity
infrastructure in rural settings. During the fifty or so years (1920s to 1970s) it took to
develop rural electricity infrastructure there were significant changes in governance
structures and institutions, at both national and regional levels, and ownership of the
electricity supply industry (ESI) itself changed (from private- and municipally-owned to
national ownership). Although we know from existing sources that rural electrification
was affected by these changes, the purpose of this paper is to examine in more detail
why and how it came to be seen as problematic in ways that influenced and probably
delayed its development and propagation. This paper draws on the findings of the
accumulated knowledge of previous research in addition to primary data sources that
include reports from government committees and electricity boards, statistical
accounts, and other publications.1
The research was carried out as part of the Realising Transition Pathways project funded
by the EPSRC. It builds on previous historical work on energy in transitions, e.g.
Arapostathis et al. (2013), Carlsson Hyslop (forthcoming), Carlsson-Hyslop and Pearson
(2013), and Johnson et al. (2014). The following sections introduce the work in the
context of the broader energy transitions literature, discuss the theoretical approaches
used, and present the background to rural electrification.
Energy transitions: theoretical approaches
The rural electrification transition concerns the change from reliance on fuels such as
coal, wood, paraffin, oil, gas, and diesel used in rural domestic and agricultural settings
to electricity, along with concomitant changes in technologies, infrastructure and social
practices.
The extensive transitions literature to date has evolved from the multi-level
perspective (MLP) (Geels, 2002, 2004) to include approaches which have responded to
criticisms of the MLP (Geels, 2011) and extended it to include consideration of politics
and power (Geels, 2014), social practices (Geels, 2011; Shove and Walker, 2010),
governance (Foxon, 2013; Smith, 2007a), and geography (Smith, 2007a). Whilst the
inclusion of these different aspects undoubtedly increases the analytical depth and
application of the MLP, this paper considers an alternative approach to be more suited
to the problems addressed in this paper.
A more significant departure from the MLP moves away from its hierarchical
(niche, regime, landscape) structure and adopts a flatter topography in which the
relationships between actors, rather than across levels, create the mechanisms and
processes through which transitions occur (Chilvers and Longhurst, 2013). The
alternative panorama of a relational approach sees nowhere being ‘outside’ the space in
which change happens. The homogeneity within the MLP’s regime tends to overlook the
1
Although key sources have been listed as references, the research for this paper was informed by a wider range of
background material, including contemporary articles in periodicals such as The Spectator.
Realising Transition Pathways
5
variation that exists within the space and contributes to its dynamics (Späth and
Rohracher, 2012). In contrast, the relational approach examines how the object of
analysis (rural electrification), ‘is in continuous flux, with meanings, governance
processes and technologies involved always variable and open to change’ (Longhurst
and Chilvers , 2013). The interrelations of meanings, governance processes, and
technologies therefore form a key part of the analysis.
Technologies and their governance have been explored widely in energy
transitions research (e.g. Scrase and MacKerron, 2009; Smith et al., 2010; Verbong and
Geels, 2010) but several authors have recognised that geography and spatial scale have
been somewhat overlooked in these literatures (Cowell et al., 2014; Sovacool and
Brown, 2009; Truffer and Coenen, 2012). For energy systems the relationship between
spatial scales and governance arrangements is argued to be critical for understanding
energy transitions (Smith, 2012; Truffer and Coenen, 2012; Seyfang and Haxeltine,
2012; Späth and Rohracher, 2012). In addition, others (e.g. Davenport and Anderson,
2005; Devine-Wright, 2011a, b) have delved further into the social construction of
places (or spaces) and how perceptions and experiences shape responses to place.
The processes of social construction produce experiences of places as products
of physical location and interactions with the location (Smith et al., 2011). Information
about the place informs categorisation and discrimination processes, which influence,
‘the value individuals ascribe to the space as well as how it should be managed’ (op cit,
p.360), with perceptions and experiences of places shaping and mediating discourses at
local, regional, and national levels (Alkon, 2004). The social constructions of place and
spaces of governance combine in this study to contribute to our understanding of how
perceptions of places affect transitions.
The role of particular governance framings or logics has been conceptualised by
Jacquie Burgess, Tom Hargreaves and colleagues in the Transitions Pathways project
who describe three governance ‘logics’ or ways of framing energy challenges (Foxon,
2013). The logics characterise three broad but changeable types of governance logic:
market, state and civil society (Figure 1), each of which frames and responds
distinctively to the context in which energy transitions occur. During a transition, actors
defend their preferred governance logic by attempting to enrol other actors into their
way of thinking about governance, with the most successful logic dominating the
governance logics action space. We consider this approach as providing a useful
heuristic tool for exploring and understanding how transition pathways are affected by
different governance logics.2 It should be noted that in our approach, not only does the
interplay between the logics in the action space vary with changing circumstances and
actor agency, but also the logics themselves alter, both through this interaction and as
views about the roles of state, market and civil society in energy respond to and reflect
wider, sometimes medium or longer term socioeconomic, ideological and political
developments (Pearson and Watson, 2011). However, we also recognise that the
approach is limited to three broadly aggregated governance logics and may overlook
2
Fuenfschilling and Truffer (2014) identified a similar set of logics in their examination of the Australian water sector.
Realising Transition Pathways
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the potential existence of alternative, additional or less aggregated logics. For example,
where governance logics meet transitions they have been focused either on a national
or non-geographical scale yet, as Smith (2007b) suggests, the national is rarely the unit
of space in which transitions actually happen. And it is notable that ‘civil society’ is a
single category of logic that smooths away any rural/urban distinctiveness.
Figure 1
2013).
The governance logics action space framework (adapted from Foxon,
This paper seeks explicitly to examine the relationship between geography and
governance and the effect of this relationship on what became a ‘problematic’ rural
electrification transition. Whilst historical research into governance and transition
processes has obvious limitations, reflecting for example contextual influences that no
longer exist today, we suggest that it can help us to understand how electricity network
development was influenced by actors’ understandings of place, how these processes
influenced governance decisions, and how constructions of place influenced
development of rural networks.
Given the nature of historical research, in that we know how the story (or
stories) end, the research here was designed to enable the capture of not only the
spatial but also the temporal aspects of electricity governances. This is particularly
important for rural electrification because governance institutions and processes
changed significantly over time. As other sources (e.g. Hannah, 1979, 1982; Hughes,
1983) provide detailed accounts of the institutional and organisational changes
affecting electricity network development, the next section explores only those key
pieces of legislation and reports that we consider informed the perceptions and
materiality of rural electrification. Next after this section is followed by an analysis of
the discursive elements used to create and legitimise framing rural electrification as
problematic and which were found to underlie significant institutional changes.
Realising Transition Pathways
7
The changing context of ‘rural electrification’
‘There is not a single rural electrification problem, but a mass of quite distinct
problems’ (PEP, 1936, p.84)
A multitude of small electricity undertakings (companies) in towns and cities provided
electricity in Britain in the late nineteenth century. Each privately- or municipallyowned company tended to own and run small electricity generating stations, supplying
electricity to customers in the local area (Hughes, 1983). Compared to some other
places around the world, particularly large cities, London’s electricity supply was
considered backward and inefficient and progress was slow to develop in other areas
(op cit). This was attributed, in part, to an unwillingness in government to impose strict
regulation on the undertakings, and to the complicated administrative structures within
London and across Britain.
In the Electric (Lighting) Act 1882, Parliament gave itself the power of regulation
over private and municipal electricity companies, in order to avoid creating a similar
situation to the issues identified with the monopolistic position of the gas industry
(Daunton, 2007). Under these arrangements, the Board of Trade authorised franchises
and provisional orders for generation and distribution rights and set boundaries for
electricity supply areas. The 1882 Act was said to have displayed, ‘tender feeling toward
municipal ownership’ under the direction of its sponsor, Joseph Chamberlain, mayor of
Birmingham and a noted champion of municipal ownership and the revenues therefrom
(Hughes, 1983, p.60). The Act established a situation of ‘regulated monopoly’ in which
private capital invested in the necessary technology and infrastructure and, after a
period of 21 years, municipal authorities had authority to purchase the generating
station and distribution infrastructure with public money (Hughes, 1983). The 1882 Act
was badly received by the industry as, it was argued, it became difficult for companies
to attract investment and to promise significant returns in the limited (21 year) period3
before the local authority might make use of their compulsory purchase power (MooreColyer, 2007).
Amendments were made in the Electric Lighting Act 1886, appeasing private
undertakings and their investors by changing the tenure period to 42 years (Hughes,
1983, p.230). However, in a provision that would affect future rural electrification, to
facilitate future purchase the Act required the supply boundaries of private utilities to
match those of local authorities, where ownership of the utility was not in the hands of
the local authority. There is general consensus (e.g. Hannah, 1979; Hughes, 1983; Owen,
1989) that the situation established in the early Electricity Acts significantly influenced
the subsequent development of the ESI, specifically because it established the pattern of
matching generation and supply to local authority boundaries set in place by the early
legislation (The Electricity Council, 1973).
3
This view has been contested as, during this period of innovation, many investments were made in electricity generation
projects which were not successful; it has been argued that because of this investors became more cautious (Byatt, 1979).
Realising Transition Pathways
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The limitations of the regulatory approach were signified by the slow, erratic
development of the industry; moves to change the situation were addressed in the
Electricity (Supply) Act 1919. The framing of this Act was influenced by experience
during World War One (WWI), when the industry faced a strong steer from
government to co-ordinate electricity supply for the manufacture of munitions. This
brought closer working between government and industry whilst revealing the
electricity network’s technological and administrative weaknesses. The Board of Trade
had appointed the Williamson Committee (Board of Trade, 1918) to investigate the
electricity industry and recommend better regulation. Had they been followed, its
recommendations would have channelled a substantial amount of authority and power
to central government. However, at the time this degree of government intervention,
control from the centre, was seen as inappropriate for electricity network development
(due to the perceived need to preserve competition between undertakings) and in its
final form the 1919 Electricity Act was quite watered down (Hannah, 1979).
The 1919 Act aimed to co-ordinate electricity network development to create an
interconnected electricity network (1919 Act). The Act established a central
government body, the Electricity Commissioners, to co-ordinate and oversee this
process. The Commissioners were to be helped by fifteen Joint Electricity Authorities
(JEAs) across England and Wales, whose aim was to oversee the regional development
of power stations. However, against the Committee’s recommendation, the JEAs had no
powers to enforce such aims and relied solely on voluntary commitments of
undertakings to co-ordinate their development. Furthermore, JEA formation was
strongly opposed by some municipalities and private undertakings, making cooperation for interconnection schemes and central control and planning hard to achieve
(Hannah, 1979).
The lack of progress made with the network by 1925 (judged by the number of
undertakings, the continued haphazard development, and lack of co-ordination and
interconnection) reached the point where both government and industry recognised
the need for greater co-ordination and the expansion of areas of supply. Consequently,
the government convened the Weir Committee.
Its remit was to, ‘review the National Problem of the Supply of Electrical Energy
and to present a report on the broad lines of policy which should be adopted to ensure
its most efficient and effective development’ (Weir Committee, 19264). The Committee’s
key recommendation was to establish a separate body to construct, ‘a “gridiron” system
of H.T. [high tension] transmission lines’ (Figure 2), covering larger areas of the country,
including some more rural regions (Electricity (Supply) Act, 1926). Under the Act, the
Central Electricity Board (CEB) was formed and the powers of the Electricity
Commissioners strengthened to enable them to prohibit undertakers from generating
electricity where it could be more cheaply obtained from Board-operated generating
stations. The aim of the ‘gridiron’ (later to become known as the National Grid) was to
4
Different dates appear in the literature for the publication of the Weir Committee Report. The report, completed in 1925
and sent to the Cabinet in that year (http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pdfs/small/cab-24-173-cp-25-254.pdf), was
seen as controversial and its formal publication delayed until 1926 (Hannah, 1979).
Realising Transition Pathways
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connect up power stations within a region, making intra-regional, rather than national,
interconnection the original intention. Although the Weir Committee expressed some
doubt about the choice to construct ‘Super Power’ or ‘Giant Stations’, given their
distance from load centres and the cost of transmission, the Commissioners and CEB
went ahead with plans, partly in pursuit of the economies of scale achievable with larger
stations. The role of the CEB was to, ‘buy power at cost from selected generating
stations, distribute it over transmission lines acquired or built by it, and sell it to
existing private or municipal undertakings for retail distribution’ (Mowat, 1956, p.342).
The 1926 Act did not pass without opposition. Conservatives opposed what was seen as
a socialist initiative and politicians representing power station interests also made their
opposition known (HC Deb (1926) 193 col.1976).
Figure 2
The Weir Committee’s planned ‘gridiron’ for Wales. (Source: Weir
Committee Report, 1926).
The period from 1926–1938 was a thin time for rural electrification, whilst being
a period of rapid construction for the national grid, providing much needed
employment. The national economy was experiencing downturns, unemployment was
high, urbanisation was increasing, and there was a general countryside exodus.
Although grid extension into rural areas did make some progress, it was largely into
areas which may now be considered ‘suburban’. The vast majority of local undertakings
did not supply farms and smaller villages and it was not until the idea and development
of the national grid came into being that supply was brought to more rural areas (the
Weir Committee had stated that the rural load that would be picked up by the
interconnecting transmission mains of the grid would be especially useful in improving
the load factor, because it differed from the urban. Moreover, ‘the social benefits of
electrically developing rural areas and of promoting de-centralisation of industry are of
Realising Transition Pathways
10
national importance.’ (Weir Committee, 1926). Even so, electricity was generally
supplied to those living closer to power stations or within areas of higher population
densities. By the outbreak of war in 1939, while all villages with a population over 500
had been connected, only 12% of farms had electricity (Hannah, 1979).
During this period, the difficulties of co-ordinating over 600 generating stations
operating different currents (AC and DC), voltages and frequencies, and which were
largely privately-owned, became starkly apparent, not least in rural areas. A programme
to standardise generation and supply began and the Labour party made proposals to
nationalise the electricity supply system (Labour Party, 1932).
The Conference on Electricity Supply in Rural Areas (CESRA)
By 1927, however, rural electrification had been recognised as a problem for the vision
of a national electricity network. The Electricity Commissioners convened a conference
to collect information on the state of rural electrification and recommend
improvements in rural supplies. The Conference on electricity supply in rural areas
(Electricity Commission, 1928) aimed to establish the ‘nature and extent of the potential
demand for electricity in rural areas’ and determine the effect of the price of supply and
cost of electrical equipment on rural development (op cit, p.5). At the time the land area
of England and Wales was characterised as 11.2% urban and 88.8% rural with 4,616
and 151 persons/square mile respectively (average, with rural areas varying widely)
(Electricity Commission, 1928). The Conference recognised that potential demand was
difficult to establish, given the limited extent to which the rural network operated at the
time. Whilst the report suggested, on one hand, that there was no difference in
consumption between urban and rural households, they proceeded with their potential
demand calculations based on lower consumption in ‘sparsely populated areas’ thinking
that rural consumers would use half the number of units that their urban counterparts
would use (60 compared to 30 units per head of population per annum) (op cit, p.53).
Significantly, these calculations were subsequently employed to set the upper rate for
electricity supply tariffs and establish whether or not grid extensions into rural areas
would be ‘reasonably remunerative’ to the undertakings (op cit, p.11).
A section of the Conference explored the uses of electrification in farming. The
contrasts between contemporary farming practices and load profiles and power station
capacity and supply were seen as problematic. While agriculture is seasonal and use of
farming machinery irregular, power stations operate at their maximum cost efficiency
when run continuously; consequently, generation undertakings desired consumers who
would not contribute to increasing peak load (which required costly investment in
occasionally used additional capacity). Furthermore, the Conference considered the use
of electricity on farms to be of secondary importance to domestic loads.
Nevertheless, rather than further research, the Conference recommended the
construction of five demonstration projects, to show that rural electrification could be
remunerative over a period of time. Each scheme included at, or very close to, its
boundary a bulk supply power station from which distribution lines would be
constructed. Of the three English projects (the other two being Scottish) the Norwich
Realising Transition Pathways
11
scheme was abandoned in 1940 with net losses of £21,821 in money of the day (£1-4.8
million in 2013 money), the Bedford scheme was abandoned in 1941 with net losses of
£28,549 (£1.2-5.2 million in 2013 money), and the Shropshire scheme made 1% per
annum profit by only its eighth year of operation (Owen, 1989)5.
The research conducted by the Conference led them to characterise rural areas as
difficult to supply unless they were close to more urban areas or sustained a population
over 500. Combining distribution costs with estimates of electricity demand to
determine suitable development areas (in terms of potential remuneration) had the
effect of removing some remoter areas from consideration. Furthermore, the failure of
the demonstration schemes to validate the Conference’s chosen technological solution,
or prove viable the anticipated revenues from the schemes, did not prevent the
approval of a similarly configured scheme in 1954, as will be seen below.
World War Two and rural action
World War Two (WWII) brought with it increased central government control over the
electricity supply industry (ESI) and an urgent drive for self-sufficiency in food (Ballin,
1946). This drive led to increased mechanisation and electrification of farm equipment.
The Electricity Commissioners implemented a policy of transmission and distribution
planning to support agricultural developments required to meet wartime needs and in
anticipation of future development.
War food requirements emphasised the scale of the remaining challenges for the
construction of a comprehensive national grid, particularly in rural areas. As with the
general move to state ownership of other industries after the War, nationalisation was
seen as part of the solution and politicians from both sides were supportive. Vesting Day
took place on 1st April 1948, signifying the dissolution of the CEB and the formation of
the British Electricity Authority (BEA) and the Electricity Consultative Councils. The 560
generating stations in existence at the time were divided amongst 14 Area Electricity
Boards, who were able to create more detailed plans for electrification and identify
specific issues in rural areas. Responsibility for electricity generation, transmission and
distribution now fell under central government control, and the BEA and Area Boards
became responsible for retail distribution of electricity in England and Wales.
Despite the reorganisation and increased focus on rural areas, the years
following nationalisation saw the BEA’s budget for rural electrification reduced
significantly. After this relatively short delay, however, central government reinstated
funding in 1953:
‘I am glad to say that one of the first acts of the present Government was to make
an increased allocation of 1 million for 1952, which was all specifically earmarked
for the purpose of rural electrical development. In the result, the amount spent in
5
Present day values calculated online at MeasuringWorth.com. Lawrence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamson, "Five Ways
to Compute the Relative Value of a UK Pound Amount, 1270 to Present," MeasuringWorth, 2015 .
Realising Transition Pathways
12
1952 was 5 million … This year the allotment is about 6 million, and for next year it
is provisionally arranged to be about 6 million. However, I want to emphasise a
very important point about these two latter figures. They are in substance the total
of the amounts asked for by all the area boards. They have not been cut, either by
the British Electricity Authority or by the Government, so that for the first time the
industry is free to develop the countrymen's electricity.’ (HC deb, 1953. Mr Geoffrey
Lloyd, Minister of Fuel)
Despite the almost complete failure of the rural demonstration projects to illustrate
financial feasibility, a formal Rural Electrification Programme based on the same
pattern of grid extension as the demonstrations, was instigated in 1954. The
programme required Area Boards to include rural electrification schemes in their
regional development plans, to achieve 85% connection of all farms by 1965 (Hannah,
1982). Welsh Area Boards had an extra five years to achieve their target, as the
proportion of rural to urban areas was greater than for English Area Boards. By this
time, farm connections had become proxies for measuring the success of rural
electrification schemes (Brassley, forthcoming). The schemes were aided further by the
Electricity Act (1957), which created the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB)
and gave the Area Boards greater financial independence. This meant that they could
spread distribution costs across all consumers in their area, thereby ensuring rural
consumers would not suffer substantially higher tariffs than other consumers, or need
to guarantee a certain minimum level of consumption. The programme ensured that by
31st March 1972, 97% of farms had been connected to the national grid, 18 years after
the Programme began and 45 years after the Conference on electricity supply in rural
areas.
Shaping the rural electrification ‘problem’
So what were the aspects of rural electrification which made it problematic? And how
did they combine to affect its governance? The focus on chronological developments in
previous sections was used to draw attention to aspects of the electricity industry
relevant to rural electrification; the focus now shifts to draw in elements of spatiality
and governance. The sections below introduce discursive elements used to create and
legitimise the framing of rural electrification as a ‘problem’ and shows how they
contributed to shaping actors’ overall ‘visions’ of rural electrification and their proposed
solutions.
Rural geographies
Burchardt (2007) suggests that the lack of distinction between agriculture and
consumption (as leisure activities) in histories of the countryside can result in
interpretive distortions. ‘The claim that the countryside and agriculture are one-andthe-same is an ideological one, a product of a particular time, place, way of seeing, and
most importantly a product of different interests’ (Burchardt, 2007, p.474). This ‘way of
seeing’ rural areas by electricity engineers, successive governments, and undertakings
Realising Transition Pathways
13
from the 1920s to the 1960s reflected a partial blindness to the diversity of the rural
arena. This contributed to rural electrification becoming problematic. Through a series
of Committees (from 1918 to 1963) and their examination of rural electrification, the
distinction between electricity consumption in agricultural and non-agricultural
activities in the rural areas gradually emerged.
For electricity provision, rural areas were represented initially as large expanses
with low population densities, where electricity use was less important than in urban
areas and where their proximity to more urban environments was an important
qualifying factor for network expansion (Electricity Commission, 1928). Although this
view was rapidly reviewed during WWII and the push for self-sufficiency in food, which
enhanced the focus on agriculture, the early connection between rural areas and
perceived electricity use affected undertakings’ willingness to extend the network.
But deeper beliefs about the countryside underlay the distinction between
agriculture and leisure in rural areas. Wright (2009) identified nostalgic beliefs in
contemporary capitalism stemming from the loss of empire, the early onset of
industrialism, and the heroics of WWII. These beliefs, which were strong at the time of
national electrification, sit within a version of the national past and were coupled with
popular reverence of the rural idyll as characterised by the ‘planner-preservationists’
(Matless, 1998), e.g. the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), and through
the writings of Clough Williams-Ellis (1928). In the context of increasing interest in
countryside pursuits after World War One (Burchardt, 2007), the preservationists
pressed for control over what had been chaotic rural development by representing rural
areas as spaces for modernisation and the production of tidy landscapes (Matless,
1998).
Government agricultural policy and changing agricultural practices influenced by
technical innovation and adoption also exerted influence (Brassley, 2000). Between
1935 and 1945 agricultural output increased as a result of government subsidies for
wheat and the success of the Milk Marketing Board but, ‘The most rapid annual rate of
[agricultural] output growth took place between 1946 and 1965.’ (Brassley, 2000, p.62).
This is attributed partly to the 1947 Agriculture Act, which declared British agriculture
a national interest, and partly to delayed but increasing adoption of existing
technologies. For example, whilst effective milking machines were available in the
1920s, 90% of herds were still being hand-milked in 1939. But between 1944 and 1961
the proportion of machine-milked herds rose from 10 to 85% (Collins, 1996, in
Brassley, 2000). This tallies with Hooper’s (1952) observation of the connection
between dairy herd size and farm electrification; larger herds were more likely to be
milked using electrical milking machinery.
The classification of rural areas (into ‘remote’, ‘composite’ or ‘mixed’ areas in
relation to the mix of urban or industrial and rural landscapes within a supply area
(Electricity Commission, 1928)) affected how estimates of consumption were made, and
therefore how profitable extension into these areas was projected to be. Despite
classification, however, the diversity of rural landscapes and lack of data made it
difficult to assess potential demand (PEP, 1936). The picture was further complicated
Realising Transition Pathways
14
because electricity competed with fuels (e.g. wood, peat) which were less familiar to
urban-focused undertakings. This made it difficult to assess the competitiveness of
electricity against fuels in common rural use. In addition, most engineers had little or no
experience of farming or agriculture and applied what were later considered, by Ballin
(1946), as inappropriate urban geographies of engineering (e.g. large-scale generation
and transmission) to the countryside and farming.
Geography also affected rural distribution through the early provisional orders,
franchises, and licences the Board of Trade granted to undertakings. As noted, these
connected the spatial extent of undertakings’ areas of supply with local authority
boundaries. Although large rural areas were covered by supply licences, undertakings
focused their development on urban sites within these areas and were under no
statutory obligation to supply rural areas with electricity. As Electricity Acts changed
over the decades prior to nationalisation, undertakings came under greater pressure to
supply rural areas. However, private undertakings, who owned the majority of licences
to supply rural areas, were less able than local authorities to access the capital to fund
the extensions to cover such areas, as they could not use municipal rates for finance.
Through the 1930s, with the rapid construction of the national grid, rose the
voice of the countryside preservationists (Williams-Ellis, 1928). They were deeply
alarmed at the scale and rapidity of electricity grid expansion, seeing the grid as
industrial development and therefore inappropriate for rural landscapes. Rather than
opposing electricity network developments in toto, they called for greater use of
underground cabling rather than overhead lines (op cit.). However, the increasing scale
of generation meant that electricity had to be transmitted further from the point of
generation to the site of consumption. This required extensive, expensive cabling. The
combination of low rural population densities, and their distance away from sites of
generation, eventually contributed to powerful arguments in favour of cheaper
overhead cables and pylons rather than more expensive underground cables (Hannah,
1979).
Rural geographies were therefore associated with low population densities,
unfamiliar farming practices, and low demand expectations, alongside the rural idyll of
the national past. The combination of these was deeply detrimental to electricity
network planning and extension in rural areas. As discussed further below, geography
shaped remuneration calculations and therefore the extent to which undertakings were
prepared to make financial commitments in rural distribution networks for little, or no
(anticipated) return.
Expectations of electricity demand
Electricity was developed for the following uses in rural areas:
a)
b)
c)
d)
Lighting
Industrial power
Domestic uses
Agricultural uses
Realising Transition Pathways
15
Lighting, then transport and industrial power were the earliest, and largely urban, uses
of electricity. These uses were over time to exert a strong influence on how electricity
generation undertakings thought about how electricity should be used and generated.
Lighting was seen initially as a luxury item, an expensive alternative to gas, oil or candle
lighting, adopted by wealthy homeowners living in urban areas, which is where
undertakings focused their developments, and a few wealthy rural estates that set up
their own supplies (Bowers, 1998; Dillon, 2002; Fouquet and Pearson, 2006). As the
scale of electricity for lighting, then transport and industry grew, the overall costs and
price of electricity fell. As a result, demand for electric lighting increased, with
developments radiating outwards from industrial areas. This pattern of development
meant that sites of electricity generation and use were concentrated around urban,
industrial areas (Owen, 1989).
It was recognised from the late nineteenth century that a continuous supply of
electricity was preferable, to consumers and engineers,
‘It is necessary to have in readiness machinery capable of supplying the maximum
possible requirements of all the consumers at any hour of the year’ (Garcke, 1897,
p.77).
In this early period, however, power station loads tended to be dominated by lighting
and even in winter tended to be of short duration, meaning that the overall load factor
would be low, with impacts on efficiency and unit costs (Bone, 1932). As electricity use
expanded in the twentieth century, patterns of electricity use in urban domestic and
industrial areas were gradually seen as complementary; industry tended to work during
daylight hours and lights came on when it went dark, meaning that power stations could
run continuously day and night. For engineers involved in designing and running the
power stations, continuity of demand was a boon as it avoided investing in additional
plant to meet times of intensive electricity use (peak demand) but which would, at times
of low demand, be out of use. Although peak load pricing was not used to shave the
demand peaks and level the load, more continuous running of generators contributed to
levelling demand (managing the ‘load profile’) and helped keep down the cost (Byatt,
1979). Continuous demand and supply therefore came to be seen by engineers,
undertakings, and government, as highly desirable.
Providing cheap electricity on demand rapidly became the norm, particularly for
lighting in urban areas where its chief competitor was the familiar, readily available and
for some time cheaper incumbent technology – gas lighting (Fouquet and Pearson,
2006). The need to provide a continuous supply of electricity was established in the
1899 Act, rooting demand expectations firmly in the way undertakings thought about,
and planned for, future developments (Electricity Commission, 1928; 1919 Committee).
Expectations of demand, coupled with an engineering enthusiasm for continuous
working, resulted in the dominant mode of development following an urban—industrial
model (Owen, 1989).
Realising Transition Pathways
16
The coupling of demand for domestic lighting with industrial uses for electricity
did not fit with rural settings where there was little or no industrial development and,
as yet, low agricultural demand due to lack of mechanisation. The perceived differences
between urban—industrial and rural demands resulted in both private and municipal
undertakings seeing rural areas as inappropriate markets for development (Board of
Trade, 1918). This was mainly because rural householders were expected to use less
electricity than their urban counterparts (Electricity Commission, 19286), partly
because of lower incomes, and farms were expected to use less than industry.
The solution adopted was to increase rural demand. Previous experience in
urban areas had illustrated that consumption increased once electricity had been
installed and, as electricity use grew, more and more electrical equipment became
available to consumers in both urban and rural areas (Carlsson-Hyslop and Pearson,
2013). Areas of potential demand increase in rural areas targeted electric heat and
electricity in agriculture. The Electrical Development Association (EDA) promoted the
use of electricity for heat in particular (op cit). Whilst some progress was made with
this, it remained anathema to some rural households where solid fuels such as wood,
coal, and peat, were in common use and, apart from labour input, were very cheap or
freely available to those willing to collect them. Whilst this changed over time,
electricity was initially in competition with familiar incumbent technologies and
challenged existing social practices.
Electricity for agriculture, whilst having a slow start, was promoted by the
establishment of the Marketing Boards following the Agricultural Marketing Act 1931.
The Milk Marketing Board (established in 1933) imposed stricter hygiene standards for
dairy farms, which could be better managed by the use of electrical sterilisation
equipment. Additionally, the push for home production in WWII resulted in government
support for farmers; the development of electrical equipment for milking, cleaning, and
lighting expanded to meet the growing needs of the dairy and poultry industries (Sayer,
2008). Support in the form of grant aid for farmers then came through the Hill Farming
Act 1946 and the Livestock Rearing Act 1951 (Moore-Colyer, 2007). As the use of
electricity in agriculture grew, the size of dairy and poultry farms rose to what could be
considered industrial levels (Brassley 2000; Hooper, 1952).
The ways in which electricity demand was represented and discussed by
(predominantly national-level) actors involved in the electricity supply industry (ESI)
problematised rural electrification. The relationship between the perceived
requirement for continuous supply to consumers and the demands this placed on
engineering contributed to a model of development which favoured a combination of
domestic urban and industrial consumers. This urban-industrial combination became
the favoured model of development which, as understood by urban engineers, left little
space to accommodate the ‘inconvenience’ of existing rural needs. The governance of
the ESI through the urban— industrial model led ultimately to the perceived necessity
of increasing rural demand to fit that model, thereby ensuring a satisfactory level of
6
This view was not shared by the whole Committee.
Realising Transition Pathways
17
remuneration for undertakings and then the nationalised ESI. Thinking was therefore
dominated by a focus on supply rather than on a balance between supply and the needs
of rural and agricultural consumers.
Technological and economic efficiency
From the late 1800s, the ‘bigger is better’ approach to electricity generation had become
settled in the imagination of actors in the electricity supply industry (Hannah, 1979;
Hughes, 1983). The underlying rationale behind this approach was efficiency and profit.
The need for efficiency manifested not only in the call for superpower stations,
but also in other distinctive areas which affected electricity generation and distribution
across urban and rural areas. Other areas in which efficiency was invoked included coal
shortages for power stations, extent of distribution, degree of interconnection, load
diversification, and co-ordination of generation and distribution activities. The
dominant voices establishing the need, and setting the criteria, for technological
efficiency were those of influential power engineers like Charles Merz and Charles
Parsons (Hughes, 1983). Engineers recommended that undertakings install larger
generating sets to achieve the greatest possible generation efficiency, thus driving down
the cost of generation and electricity, even though these technologies were only
affordable by larger undertakings with bigger demand levels.
Arguments for greater efficiency in electricity generation were seen with greater
clarity during World War One (WWI), as the cost of coal increased substantially (Board
of Trade, 1918). Consequently, after WWI, smaller power stations came to be seen as
inefficient in their use of coal and outmoded compared to the efficiency achievements of
larger power stations. Recognition of the need to achieve greater efficiency in electricity
generation was formalised in the Electricity Act 1919. This gave the Electricity
Commissioners powers to sanction or refuse the construction of power stations that
were, by the Commissioners’ efficiency standards, considered uneconomic or inefficient
(Hannah, 1979). The model of development concentrated generation in selected
industrial areas with the construction of a few ‘superpower’ stations (which were
approx. 25MW in the late 1920s) (Lloyd-George, 1924). However, many independent
power stations remained, and were constructed, in areas where the undertakings were
strongly protective of their independence and choice over scale and type of generation
and frequency.
The need rapidly to satisfy increasing, and mostly urban, demand was one
reason for the continued construction of what were widely considered uneconomic and
inefficient power stations. Smaller power stations were quicker and cheaper to build
than their superpower cousins and, through interconnection, loads could be shared and
consumer demand could be met. In addition, the decision to concentrate generation in a
few, large power stations necessitated costly distribution network extension and
interconnection. Interconnection of electricity stations to help manage the network was
established during WWI; it became essential in WWII to maintain supply to munitions
factories when power stations came under threat from aerial bombardment (Ballin,
Realising Transition Pathways
18
1946). Interconnection was therefore essential to achieving efficiency in this model of
electricity network development, despite its initial cost.
The impact of efficiency as a discursive thread running through decisions made
about scale of generation and the extent and means of distribution meant that
arrangements for rural electricity provision were relatively slow because they were
expensive. However large and efficient the generating plant, the cost of the associated
distribution infrastructure was prohibitive to rural development, with the result that,
until infrastructure costs were socialised (under the Area Boards, post-WWII) and
‘efficiencies’ in agriculture were in place, significant grid expansion into rural areas did
not take place. Increasing demand in rural areas eventually, therefore, became a
primary purpose of the co-ordinating national and regional bodies in order to justify the
expense of distribution and the higher costs of generation. Furthermore, as the scale of
generation and distribution increased, it was not until sufficient knowledge and
experience of rural requirements accrued in administrative organisations, such as the
Area Electricity Boards and the Electricity Consultative Councils, that the co-ordination
of power station development and their interconnection benefitted rural areas.
Ownership of generation and distribution
Arguably, systematic rural electrification began with intent under nationalisation and
the 1954 Rural Electrification Programme. Previous ownership arrangements, divided
between municipal and privately-owned undertakings, with varying shares in rural
areas of supply, had not resulted in significant electrical supply to rural areas, as both
focused on providing electricity to revenue-yielding industrial areas. Private generation,
such as might be found on farms or in country houses, was discouraged by the
Electricity Commissioners (from 1919 onwards), who encouraged suppliers to take
bulk supply from larger generating stations. Early applications by private companies to
government for franchise rights to supply electricity in rural areas meant that the
majority of rural areas were limited to electricity supply from private, rather than
municipal, undertakings. Private companies, with their emphasis on profit, were seen as
least likely to develop rural networks, due to high costs, and were less able or willing to
risk making the investment in rural distribution for low returns; where they did provide
a supply, the price of their electricity was higher than municipal undertakings and so
less affordable to those living on lower incomes in rural areas (Ballin, 1946).
Remunerative working
Remunerative working was a significant factor underlying government and undertaking
decisions on rural electricity network development. Remunerative potential was based
on estimations of demand which, as previously established, were notoriously difficult
for rural areas. Demand estimates were also used to establish tariffs for rural
consumers and, to ensure a return on investments, if undertakings considered that the
price was acceptable to consumers, they requested a guarantee of use and/or a
connection fee from the end-user. Furthermore, they legitimised their remuneration
conditions, which had been set by government at 20% of total capital cost, through
Realising Transition Pathways
19
efforts to increase demand in rural areas. This was in direct contrast with the treatment
of urban dwellers who were not requested to use more electricity to justify connection.
The price of electricity determined by CESRA was criticised for being potentially higher
than necessary; the causes for this were said to include high local rate demands for
private undertakings, profit policies based on selling smaller quantities of higher priced
units, and overlapping areas of supply causing excess generation over demand (PEP,
1936). All these factors were said to have contributed to the delayed responses by
undertakings in this inter-war period.
Electricity demand, efficiency, ownership, and remuneration all contributed to
construction of the ‘rural’ as a site where electricity development was problematic.
These discursive elements, coupled with nostalgic beliefs about the countryside,
produced rural geographies as spaces in which technological developments designed
for urban and industrial environments were difficult to site. Governance of electricity in
rural areas was therefore influenced not only by demand assumptions, models of
ownership and efficiency, profit motives, and a vision of a national electricity network
but also less-well understood agricultural and social rural practices and historical
values.
Deconstructing the problem of rural electrification
The following sections begin with reflections on the story of rural electrification itself
before moving on to discuss implications for theory and energy transitions.
From expectations of demand to responsibility for electricity network
development the rural context, and knowledge and perceptions of it, shaped
fundamentally the processes which influenced rural electrification. Rural was, in fact, so
different to the familiar urban— industrial context that it required a change in rural and
farming practices to increase demand to urban levels in order to legitimise the
additional expense of electricity provision to the countryside.
The discursive elements described above legitimised framing rural electrification
as problematic. Electricity technology discourses, established by predominantly urban
and industrial actors and translated from urban and industrial environments to rural
spaces, were used to preserve the status quo and legitimise the technological choices
they had already made. The socio-cultural benefits witnessed in industry and urban
areas were seen as transferable. However, rural areas challenged the assumptions
underlying the technical and economic achievements of electrical generation,
distribution, and supply. The rural space was therefore required to conform, in the
sense of social, technological, and political practices, and reconfigure to reflect the
dominant mode of urban–industrial technological provision and its associated
governance practices.
The governance practices which emerged from the creation of the national grid
supported changes in agricultural practices, which were seen as an industrialisation of
the countryside (Sayer, 2008, 2013). Agricultural productivity and output became
increasingly important during and after WWII but challenged nostalgic notions of the
Realising Transition Pathways
20
countryside idyll. The countryside preservationists voiced strong complaints about the
changing landscape whilst maintaining the idea of modernisation. Modernised rural
spaces therefore had to be governed in such a way as to preserve their nostalgic
elements. The initial profit-driven urban–industrial model of electrification
marginalised rural people and their needs, creating instead a countryside which served
the needs of urban populations.
Engineers and their representative institutions had considerable influence over
the process of bringing electricity to rural areas. As the ESI grew, their technological
solutions (tending towards ever increasing scales of generation) soon became firmly
established, so firmly established that the technology came to ‘speak’ for itself. The
expectation of a continuous, responsive, electricity supply was soon propagated by
engineers who argued that continuous operation of generating plant brought costs
down, despite the fact that there was no need for a continuous domestic supply as
electricity for lighting only was prevalent during the early 1920s. Following WWI
government soon became dependent on engineers to provide solutions to problems of
electricity provision where they arose, particularly in relation to the rural areas.
However, early conformation of an electricity industry constructed around principles of
efficiency and economies of scale proved difficult to reorganise and re-shape to suit
non-urban or non-industrial contexts. As efficiency propagated the construction of
larger power stations, the expense of distribution networks was justified by the
economies of scale achieved in generation. As the larger power stations required huge
capital investment and finance, remuneration became a crucial discourse upon which
network development in rural areas hinged.
The rural demonstration schemes of the 1930s were an attempt at legitimating
the expense of building rural distribution networks. These schemes aimed to illustrate
the viability of large-scale power generation and distribution. They demonstrated that
rural electrification was indeed expensive, with high distribution costs and yes, with
relatively low levels of demand, it did have a significant impact on profits: only one out
of the three English schemes made money – after eight years of operation. Each scheme
received bulk supply from power stations at the edge, or near the boundary, of the
scheme – conditions which were inappropriate for demonstrating how electricity could
be supplied to the more rural, remote houses and farms in England and Wales.
Nevertheless, despite the financial failure of two out of the three English projects, the
rural demonstration projects still managed to generate credibility for the largescale/centralised approach to rural electricity supply. It was acknowledged that the
projects would become self-supporting in time, a discursive turn of phrase which
recognised that there were problems with the urban–industrial model but saw the
solution to be socio-cultural rather than technological, and which revealed the strength
of influence of engineering solutions and their close association with the economics of
generation and distribution. To engineers the solution to rural electrification lay not in
developing alternative financial or technological plans but in increasing rural demand.
The demonstration schemes illustrate how the close coupling of technological
scale with efficiency obscured the broader picture of generation, distribution, and
Realising Transition Pathways
21
demand, by omitting details such as geography and end-use demand. The ways of
thinking about efficiency of generation and distribution which favoured large-scale,
centralised solutions dominated electricity generation solutions that had already been
adopted by farmers and rural households, e.g. mobile electricity generators and motors
on the farm, and diesel generators for lighting the home. Whilst it may seem more
obvious to us now to examine end-uses to determine appropriate technologies (Lovins
et al., 2002), at the time, the expertise required to develop appropriate rural solutions
was lacking amongst urban supply engineers. Until rural expertise developed and rural
demand increased, rural electrification remained a difficult and non-remunerative task.
Implications for theory
A relational approach assisted us in recognising and accounting for the diversity within
the ‘space’ where the rural electrification transition occurred. The research revealed the
extent to which the urban and industrial spatial contexts influenced the transition
pathway of rural electrification and helped us to understand the interaction between
technologies, meanings, and governance processes. Electricity arguably developed in
niche urban environments which configured the space of electricity provision. As
experience in this type of geographical location increased, the ‘institutional void’ (Späth
and Rohracher, 2012) perceived to exist in rural spaces was filled by what was seen as a
successful technology. However, the technology of rural electrification required a
governance configuration to enable its successful national propagation. This came in the
form of reconfigured rural social practices, e.g. shifts to dairy and poultry farming,
changes in government agricultural policies, and support for rural electrification
developments as part of the national grid programme.
In terms of governance logics the market-led transition focused on industrial and
urban consumption was unable to respond to the increasing pressure for a truly
national, rather than urban, grid. Over time it became clear that greater levels of coordination were required for the overall development and operation of the grid, and
this required more central control or government intervention. Whilst the market and
government governance logics go some way to explaining the governance of rural
electrification, they are unable to explain the full story. It is clear that there is another,
powerful logic underlying rural electrification, and the development of the electricity
industry as a whole. This is the logic of engineering or technology.
Decisions about size of power station, length of distribution line, even demand
and social practices, can be traced back to reveal an underlying technology logic which
framed the decisions. For example, heating in rural households was seen as important
for increasing rural demand. Heating, unlike other domestic electrical technologies,
often requires long periods of use creating a load profile which makes managing
electricity generation simpler, despite costing more than direct use of the fuel (Lovins et
al., 2002). In this sense, technology exerted a strong influence over social practices in
rural areas.
The elements that came together to problematise rural electrification
simultaneously stabilised the existing (energy system) configuration. Urban engineers
Realising Transition Pathways
22
lacked experience of rural environments and therefore represented ‘rural’ in a way
which relied on their own experiences of power generation. The momentum of the
urban—industrial model left little space for reflection on the role of electricity in rural
areas and did not leave space in which an effective, or indeed always efficient, solution
could be developed. In fact, rural electrification was so tightly fused with a technological
solution that it became the problem of rural electrification. The problem of expensive
rural network extensions, based on the urban—industrial model of electricity
generation and distribution, held back developments until a national government
governance logic came to dominate.
The heterogeneity of rural geographies, variations in ways to achieve efficiency,
and different agricultural and social practices alert us to the inherent risks of managing
transitions as though they were homogeneous. Shove and Walker (2007) caution us to
be aware of how boundaries are constructed and managed in transitions through the
construction of specific concepts, which are used to set agendas, as in Geels’ (2006)
analysis of the transition from cess pool to sewer systems. Whilst boundaries of this sort
are seen to be useful as a means of management, defining rural areas by geographical
boundaries, population densities, and proximity to urban spaces was not useful for rural
electrification.
Wissen (2009) notes the constraints of the MLP as a ‘static’ concept and calls for
consideration of the effects of different spatial scales on governance. Whilst
geographical landscapes do define some sort of boundary, are we moving beyond
geography as a defining variable and witnessing a shift in how we define and use spatial
scales? Consider, for example, the fluidity of boundaries shared through social practices.
If energy governance was considered operational at the ‘level’ of ownership (e.g. rooftop
solar PV) what does this imply for transitions and governance practices? It perhaps
implies a move not only away from the MLP as a static concept but also from static
geographies and a redefinition of spatial scales defined by more fluid boundaries.
Implications for energy transitions
Truffer and Coenen (2012, p.369) bemoan the lack of ‘territorial embeddedness’ in
transitions research which fails to explore whether or not spatial context matters. The
case of rural electrification confirms that transitions are spatially uneven and that
spatial context, and its interpretation, matters. The research found that lack of
experience and understanding of rural environments created a problem and generated
a solution which was, arguably, often inappropriate. The view of grid expansion was
seen, uncritically, as beneficial and previous work on rural electrification examined the
‘problem’ of rural electrification from this perspective (e.g. Hannah, 1979). However,
this research suggests that this view of grid expansion not only overlooks the
relationship between electricity supply and end-use demand but also fails to account for
spatial context and variability. The demands of centralised generation, developed to
serve urban and industrial consumers, brought about large-scale changes in rural areas
in order to satisfy the efficiencies of the ideal model of generation. The rural
Realising Transition Pathways
23
electrification transition therefore came about as a result of the territorial
embeddedness of electricity supply in urban contexts.
The predominance of urban issues in the rural electrification transition
highlights the risk of overlooking insights from other spatial scales, which can restrain
the pace of change. The recent rapid uptake of solar PV in the UK provides an example
where electricity use combines with efficiency of use and moves to economise, e.g.
through changing behaviours and social practices within a ‘home’ space which provides
the site where all these things come together. The problems identified in this paper, that
were created by using a spatial scale focused on a centralised network to supply
electricity to rural areas, suggest that centralised generation may not have been always
and everywhere the best solution.
Understanding transitions requires asking appropriate questions, which the
accepted approach to rural electrification, in a sense, often failed to do. Rather than
assuming the need or desire for electricity, questions could have been asked, such as:
how would farming benefit from electricity? What is the best/quickest method of
providing access to electricity in rural areas? How would electricity enhance rural social
values? Without these questions having been asked, we are left with the uncertainty
about whether the national grid was the best way to bring electricity to all rural areas
and whether it will continue to be the best way for generating and distributing
electricity in the future. Indeed, it seems more likely that the future may bring
combinations of grid-provided and distributed generation. Recent years have seen
rising interest in the development of growing amounts of distributed generation and
consumer, even ‘prosumer’ engagement, interfacing with a smarter grid and larger–
scale generation, as a potential pathway for a UK low carbon transition (RTP Engine
Room, 2015). In addressing the low carbon transition, the way in which ‘rural’ is
constructed will continue to matter.
Final comments: The continuing problem of rural electrification
Despite Edison’s original expectations of electricity supply being locally generated and
distributed, the idea of small-scale, independent generation was eroded gradually, as
centralised generation came to be viewed as more efficient (Hughes, 1983). Large-scale
electricity generation and distribution came to dominate most industrialised, developed
countries, although different governance practices and ownership models existed. For
example, President Roosevelt, as part of America’s New Deal, created the rural
electrification administration (REA) in 1935, facilitating delivery of electricity to rural
areas through rural co-operatives (Kline, 2003); in Sweden, both state- and privatelyowned power stations provided electricity across the country (AIEE, 1927). Today, an
increasing range and availability of energy generation technologies, which afford
alternative socio-technical configurations for rural electricity (Niez, 2010), suggest that
no single form of governance or technology combination offers a solution for meeting
the needs of people across diverse rural geographies and countries (Ilskog and Katyega,
2004). Furthermore, whilst electricity has been widely associated with social benefits
(Barnes, 2007), questions about income and gender equality continue to be raised
Realising Transition Pathways
24
(Matinga and Annegarn, 2013). Whilst this paper has discussed some of the ways in
which energy transitions are affected by geography and governance, it is clear that rural
electrification remains problematic.
Finally, we argue for a recognition of rural electrification’s heterogeneity, whether
spatial, temporal, technological or cultural. This implies that rather than one rural
electrification ‘problem’, there are different ‘problems’. And it calls for an appreciation
that the lens through which rural electrification is viewed has influenced and will go on
influencing how each area’s ‘problem’ is constructed and addressed.
Acknowledgement
We are grateful to Tim Foxon for helpful suggestions on the text but remain solely
responsible for all views, errors and omissions.
Realising Transition Pathways
25
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