The Electricity Sector and Energy Policy

Abstract

In the context of an analysis of energy requirements and the fast breeder programme, one of the main considerations must be the prospects for the energy economy’s electricity sector. It is, of course, this sector that the nuclear programme is essentially designed to serve, so that expectations for electricity will be the main element which shapes the size and speed of nuclear development, in general, and within the framework of which the fast breeder programme, in particular, must be determined. However, the growth of the electricity sector is not simply a function of the rate of growth of the total demand for energy in the economy. It is also related to institutional decisions on the issue of what may be called ‘the electrification of society’—a concept which is sometimes explicitly stated¹ but one which is much more often implicitly assumed as part of the very widely held view that the demand for electricity in any economy is bound to grow at a rate in excess of energy demand in general. Indeed, such a development often seems to be held to be a ‘law’ of the energy economy and one, moreover, which is widely believed to be eminently desirable. As a consequence, the whole question of the relationship between the demand for electricity and the alternatives for energising society has become a largely unexamined part of energy policy making². It is to this issue that this paper is directed, as the costs, safety, security and other problems of the fast breeder programme mean that we cannot afford to allow the issue of the electrification of society to remain an unexamined side issue in energy policy decision taking.