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Abstract
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ABSTRACT Despite continued advocacy since the turn of the century, there has been negligible adoption of combined heat and power (CHP) for district heating (DH) in Britain. This paper summarises the treatment of the option and suggests a framework for explanation. The long neglect of CHP/DH can be explained neither as the result of a conspiracy among existing energy institutions, nor in terms of an unfavourable but rational assessment of its economic potential. It requires instead a historical and structural analysis of the context: the energy sector and its broader social and economic role. The activity on CHP/DH that can be traced must be situated in the development and relations of key organisations - the electricity industry and central and local government. The paper thus addresses both the apolitical and technocratic character of much energy policy writing, and acontextual accounts developed in certain recent contributions to a 'new sociology of technology'. Introduction It is inherent in the process of producing mechanical and hence electrical energy from a heat engine that much of the energy input is released as relatively low temperature heat. By various techniques it is possible to produce reject heat at a temperature useful for space heating or industrial process heating, giving a much higher overall efficiency of conversion and saving fuel over separate production of electricity and heat. Heat from combined heat and power plant, or from another central source, can be piped in the form of hot water or steam to users' premises, in 'district heating' networks.[1] The basic techniques of CHP and DH were devised at the end of the last century. Many of the technical and economic problems, the economic and social merits and disadvantages, and the different ways of assessing them, were rehearsed by early this century.[2] It is well known that large scale DH with CHP sources is used extensively in other Northern Hemisphere countries, notably in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and the USSR.[3] Yet in Britain, only a limited number of mostly small heat-only DH schemes are found, and CHP/DH is virtually non-existent. Electricity production and the provision of heat are almost entirely separate activities, physically and institutionally. This paper explores the social processes which have led to the virtual absence of CHP/DH in Britain. It has two objectives: first, to give a brief account of the treatment of the CHP/DH option in the country; and second to argue for a particular approach to explaining this absence. Before the study on which this paper is based[4], no comprehensive account of the history of the option in Britain existed. That reflects a general tendency in historiography and contemporary depiction to rationalise actual social arrangements as somehow natural and inevitable, and to ignore alternatives which remained undeveloped. For similar and more specific reasons an even stronger determinism operates in accounts of technological developments.[5] Thus CHP/DH has been almost entirely written out of histories of the British energy sector. CHP became topical again in Britain in the 1980s, and indeed found itself at the intersection of a number of debates and advocated by a variety of groups. Yet there has still been little attempt to understand and learn from the long and sorry history of its neglect, and implicit explanations remain inadequate. Advocates of the technique, frustrated and unable to understand why such an obviously sensible technology has not been taken up with enthusiasm, have often resorted to accusations of a deliberate plot on the part of the energy industries and related sections of government to suppress it. On the other hand, government and the electricity industry have taken the line that they have never been opposed to the option, but that its economics has been assessed rationally and that if there is little in existence, that is nonetheless the economically optimum level; particular circumstances in the country must mean that it is unsuitable. There are valid elements in both views, but, as we shall see, they do no more than scratch the surface. Neither a positivistic view of economic rationality, nor a conspiracy theory, are adequate. I shall try to demonstrate that an explanation of the neglect of CHP/DH requires instead a historical and structural analysis of its context: the energy sector and its broader social and economic role. The little activity on CHP/DH that can be traced must be situated in the organisational and technical development of the key institutions - the electricity industry and central and local government - and developing relations between them. These characteristics and relations must in turn be linked to the specific character of the British economy and state. Somehow CHP seems to have found only a limited role and precarious existence in very specific circumstances in the interstices of the sector - or simply fallen in the gaps between the existing institutions. That it should have been left to such a fate and never established a firm institutional base, itself needs explaining. A number of points could be drawn out of this account and argument for energy policy and for political action to achieve change in the sector. The relation between the institutional structure of the sector and the fate of alternative technologies and other initiatives, should have been an important focus for research in the wake of the 1970s energy crisis. It ought to become such again as countries try to tackle the implications of the greenhouse effect. For this audience, however, I want to concentrate on the framework of analysis.[6] The history of CHP and DH in Britain falls reasonably neatly into four periods: up to 1940; the 40s and 50s; the 60s and up to the mid 70s; and from the mid 70s onwards. The character of activity in these four periods was markedly different, and this was in turn dependent on sharply differing conditions in the sector. I: Early History British technical journals around the turn of the century carried discussion of American experiments in DH and accounts of the early US city steam networks. Some British engineers had visions of combined heat and electric lighting stations capable of supplying whole neighbourhoods, and expressed frustration at the lack of opportunities and the perceived reluctance of local authorities or property owners to take up the general idea or specific proposals.[7] Some pressed their case to official bodies like the Royal Commission on Coal Supplies in 1903.[8] There are scattered references in journals and public records to proposals and occasionally to actual schemes for heat supply using either engine waste heat or live steam taken from boilers at times of low electrical load. Thus in 1917, St Marylebone Electricity Department in London was supplying the Public Health Committee's 'disinfecting baths' for 'verminous persons' with steam from its power station boiler house, the former finding the arrangement 'remunerative' and the latter saving itself 'considerable expense and trouble'.[9] But such schemes remained curiosities - notable because they were exceptional. Manchester Corporation developed the earliest significant supply scheme, providing steam from its city centre power stations to nearby office blocks and factories from 1911, first taking 'live' steam from the boilers and later bleeding steam from the first condensing turbines installed in WW1. The use of the stations declined in the 20s, particularly when none were 'selected' for inclusion in the Central Electricity Board's national coordinated generation scheme; supply was nonetheless maintained for some years by live steam, and in the case of Bloom Street, for several decades with special heat-only boilers.[10] Manchester also experimented early on in the suburbs of Blackley and Gorton with central supply of hot washing water, as the provision of 'working class dwellings' grew rapidly in the 20s. Beset by technical problems and with disappointing economics, these schemes were abandoned after a few years in favour of individual boilers.[11] Local authorities' housing programmes in the 20s might also have been expected to provide opportunities for early attempts at networks for space heating. But the single coal fire was the rule, and the one significant example of DH, the exception. Dundee Council installed two schemes in its first housing estates, providing an unusually high standard of heating and hot water.[12] But the economics of the schemes came in for criticism early in their life, and the controversy continued for decades. They were virtually the only examples to which people interested in DH could turn for operating experience and actual costs, while they arguably had permanently to bear the consequences of mistakes in planning. A case could have been made that the economics, if itself marginal, was promising for other schemes, and that they had been technically reasonably successful. But the Dundee experience did not persuade other local councils to follow its lead. Fuel shortages and rationing after WW1 produced a spate of interest in CHP among British engineers and government officials. Efficiency of fuel use was the dominant concern of government inquiries in the sector in the interwar years.[13] While in industry the practice of utilising engine exhaust heat grew, and a number of small group heating schemes were introduced in hospitals, military bases and other institutions, little was done to encourage them; instead the widespread view was that private electricity generation would probably and rightly disappear in favour of supply from the growing public system. The cooperation necessary between authorities which might supply heat and those with a potential use for it, seemed difficult, and success rare and short-lived. Clues to the failure to take up CHP more seriously can be gleaned from the deliberations of engineering institutions, with distinct divisions apparent by the 1920s.[14] Electrical engineers, most in the employ of electricity undertakings, argued strongly and almost exclusively for the trajectory of increasing electrical efficiency through larger turbines with improved steam conditions. Many small generating stations were being scrapped and supply consolidated into larger public stations, a process encouraged during WW1 and which underlay the approach of the committees tackling the reorganisation of the supply industry.[15] Some engineers professed sympathy for the idea but stressed practical problems and doubtful economics; others explicitly regarded CHP as a 'retrograde policy'.[16] Many felt they had enough problems without taking on a dubious second function, incidental to their main activity. The Electricity Commission, an agency set up in 1919 to coordinate and attempt to rationalise the chaotic structure of the industry, with its multitude of small private and local government undertakings, barely ever mentioned it.[17] A handful of heating engineers and a few remaining general engineers questioned the wisdom of the dominant trend and continued to advocate CHP throughout the 1920s and 30s, by lobbying central and local government and through the professional institutions and the press.[18] They stressed the advantages to be gained: fuel saving, labour-saving, smoke abatement, and improved living conditions, and they were able to publicise the early experience of US, continental and Soviet schemes. They continued their efforts through the war years and beyond. They finally began to make some impact through participation in central government advisory bodies, which relied heavily on outside expertise for many subjects, and in acting as consultants to local authorities in their planning for postwar reconstruction. II: The 1940s and 1950s The period of planning for reconstruction, from the mid war years on, provided the context for both widespread interest in CHP/DH in Britain and good opportunities for its introduction. Support had grown for greater state intervention in the economy, and to provide better living conditions. Wartime controls and planning mechanisms accelerated long-term trends in the growth of state powers and responsibilities. 1945 saw the return of a Labour government committed to a programme of building a mixed economy and welfare state. Physically, the destruction of city centres, slum clearance programmes, and plans for new towns and suburbs, presented opportunities to introduce innovative and improved infrastructure and services. In addition, severe fuel shortages made efficiency in energy use a major concern.[19] To trace the treatment of CHP/DH we need to follow the actions of government departments, especially the newly constituted Ministry of Fuel and Power, small but initially keen to take on coordination of the energy industries, and the Ministry of Health, with overall responsibility for the new housing programme; the electricity supply industry and other energy industries; local authorities, responsible for public housing and for the implementation of much of the welfare state apparatus decided and directed centrally, and with new planning powers and duties; and advocates of CHP and DH among heating engineers, who catalysed early efforts to introduce the option. And we need to focus on several arenas, overlapping and to a great extent containing the same groups and often the same key individuals and variants of the same arguments. These were expert committees; legislative processes; professional and public debate; negotiations over specific schemes; and importantly, since none of the major actors were monolithic in their approach, internal debates and processes in each organisation.[20] In advance of government initiatives on CHP and DH, major ambitious proposals were put forward by local authorities, for London - three schemes, for the City, the South Bank, and the north bank area of Pimlico - large new suburbs of Birmingham and Manchester, and the centres of Bristol and Coventry. The schemes ranged in maximum demand from 25 to 400 MWh. Likewise usually prompted by heating engineers acting as consultants or serving on advisory committees, another seventy local authorities elsewhere at least considered schemes for specific areas between 1940 and 1955.[21] Many were stimulated by initially positive pronouncements from central government in 1946. Of these about 35 reached the stage of preliminary plans and costings. Several - such as those at Swindon and Darwen as well as the major city plans - originally envisaged CHP sources, often because of the proximity of a power station but in some cases involving building and running their own, and others anticipated an eventual link up to a larger CHP/DH scheme. Schemes were considered for six new towns.[22] Each of the major schemes ran into criticism as costs escalated, and underwent major revisions in an attempt to keep them afloat.
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