Energy Depoliticisation in the UK: Destroying Political Capacity

Abstract

Provides new insights into depoliticisation literatures by applying depoliticisation beyond economic and monetary policy to energy and climate change policy.

Demonstrates ways in which forms of depoliticisation can affect political capacity to respond to new policy challenges.

Challenges climate change and energy transition literatures by explaining how and why UK energy policy institutions have constrained innovation and sustainable change.

Depoliticisation, as a concept, has been utilised to explain specific aspects of economic governance as it has developed over the past thirty years, particularly in certain OECD countries. This article focuses on the outcomes of three forms of depoliticisation, marketised, technocratic and non-deliberative, for political capacity. Political capacity is defined in relation to a notion of politics as social interaction, deliberation, choice and agency. Using UK energy governance as a case study it claims that the depoliticisation of energy policy has resulted in embedded corporate power, a widening disjuncture between experts and majoritarian institutions and limited knowledge structures. As a result the state’s role is still confined to giver of market signals and to temporary interventions in the face of complex and unprecedented commitments to transition the UK towards a low carbon future.

Introduction

UK energy governance institutions have been facing considerable new challenges and contestations for the past decade or so. For a period of time, principally in the 1990s, the pro-market energy model appeared to work reasonably well with energy companies managing to deliver affordable and reliable energy to UK consumers. As of the mid-2000s, however, it started to become apparent that markets were at risk of under-delivering on energy supply security and affordability whilst climate change mitigation had become politically far more salient (see Lockwood 2013). Scientific arguments about anthropogenic climate change as well as debates about dwindling oil resources, the UK’s ageing energy infrastructures and rising electricity and gas prices have together resulted in various, ongoing repoliticisations of energy as an issue area (Kuzemko 2013, 2014). Recognition of these concerns and contestations has been evident in the adoption of a number of new energy policy objectives and in some attempts to redesign UK energy governance institutions. For example, the UK over the course of the 2000s has adopted the Climate Change Act, a set of legally binding carbon dioxide emissions reductions targets, has set up the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), has devised some plans to transition to a low carbon economy as well as adopting important new energy security and poverty objectives (DTI 2003; HMG 2008a; HMG 2008b).

However it is one thing setting targets and another delivering on them. It is starting to become apparent that delivering on climate change objectives whilst ensuring secure and affordable supplies is no mean feat—it can be described as highly complex, a Herculean task as well as completely unprecedented in policy terms (see Smith 2009). It has also been widely observed that UK energy governance institutions, despite the high number of new policies and Acts of Parliament over this time period, so far appear unable to successfully deliver these complex new energy policy objectives (Mitchell 2008; Scrase and Ockwell 2009; Smith 2009; Lockwood 2013). For example it can be argued that fossil fuels still dominate the energy mix, the UK remains quite far off its 20-20-20 renewable energy target, energy poverty is growing, gas and electricity prices have risen rapidly and some vital new infrastructure, generation and technology investments are not materialising at the speed and scale required. This is clearly not to claim that there have been no changes in energy policy, but that changes have been insufficient in terms of timing, profundity and quality to have sufficient impact in terms of a sustainable, secure and affordable energy transition.

One explanation for underwhelming achievements so far has been the degree to which energy policy has been bounded ideologically, thereby constraining the range of choices and/or policy instruments available to policy-makers (Mitchell 2008; Smith 2009; Rutledge 2010). Others have also pointed to a high degree of, related, institutional inertia and insufficient state involvement in supporting energy transitions (Fouquet 2010, 6595; Lehtonen and Kern 2009, 103). These explanations tend to emphasise the static nature of energy governance whereas arguably new policy objectives are evidence of change and strong contestations have been and remain evident in political debates. This article argues that the ability of the political system to deliver new objectives and respond to ongoing politicisations has been, and still is, limited by a lack of political capacity brought about in part by various forms of depoliticisation. Specifically it argues that it is the forms that energy depoliticisations took, within specific ideational contexts, which have reinforced inertia and underpinned a lack of state capacity to manage, coordinate and deliver collective energy and climate goals. In this way this article makes a contribution to two areas—to understandings of the impacts of depoliticisations on certain forms of political capacity and to understanding how political practices constrain and colour sustainable energy transitions.

The article proceeds as follows: the first half outlines three heuristic forms of depoliticisation and explains how and why these were deployed within UK energy policy over the course of the 1980s and 1990s. Inter-relationships between ideas, forms of depoliticisation, path dependency and change are explored and emphasised as important explanatory variables. The second half assesses in more detail the ways in which forms of depoliticisation, once institutionalised within political practice, resulted in embedded corporate power, weak political institutions and an inability to question or reach far beyond market liberal orthodoxies. This work has been informed empirically by analysis of energy policy, consultation and strategy documents conducted over a six-year period with an emphasis on ideas, institutional structures and mandates and interactions between drivers for and resistances to change. Evidence from these documents has been cross-checked against insights gleaned from 22 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, often at a senior level, who have been involved in energy policy-making and regulation.

1. Depoliticisation and UK Energy Governance

Depoliticisation, or delegation, has been referred to by politicians, civil servants and some academics as positive—as a solution to a variety of political problems often perceived in terms of government overload (see Flinders and Buller 2006, 294; Hay 2007, 91). By contrast this article situates itself with respect to critical depoliticisation literatures wherein decisions to pass responsibility and accountability in a given issue area away from government are understood as undemocratic in practice (Burnham 2001; Flinders and Buller 2006; Hay 2007; Kettell 2008; Rogers 2009; Jenkins 2011; Mügge 2011; Wood and Flinders 2014). Depoliticisation is often conceptualised within this literature as a governing strategy, tactic or tool pursued specifically with the intention of avoiding both accountability for and deliberation and debate over certain issue areas (Burnham 2001; Kettell 2008). This in practice reduces the discretionary nature of decision-making replacing it with a more ‘rules-based’ system over which civil servants and politicians have less active day-to-day control (Burnham 2001, 136). In practice depoliticisation is understood to take a variety of forms including a passing of responsibility from government to the private sector and/or from government bodies to quasi-public or independent bodies (Hay 2007, 82–85; see also Flinders and Buller 2006; Wood and Flinders 2014).

As will be seen below the forms that depoliticisation in UK energy governance took can be understood largely within these parameters but there is, however, one interesting point of departure that this article identifies and explores. This has to do with claims here about links between depoliticisations and political capacity in the face of repoliticisations. Although interactions between depoliticisations and repoliticisations are recognised within these literatures they have tended to emphasise the path dependent nature of successfully depoliticised issue areas. This is partly because by conceptualising depoliticisation as a governing strategy whereby state managers actively seek to insulate themselves from negative outcomes the emphasis is often on a lack of willingness to change from current systems of governance (Burnham 2001; Kettell 2008; Rogers 2009). A central aspect of this explanation is the paradoxical nature of depoliticisation whereby governments are understood to be deliberately enhancing political control through processes of delegation (Burnham 2014). The starting point of analysis here is different in that there is recognition of some political desire to change as evidenced in new (legally binding) policy objectives, but the argument here is that government has not maintained political control over the institutions that decide upon and deliver energy policy objectives.

What this article further suggests is that the lack of political capacity to respond, even when willing, to pressures to change is partly related to how energy has been depoliticised. This approach rests upon the notion that depoliticisations are contextually contingent at points in time (see Kettell 2008, 635). In seeking to understand depoliticisation as contingent we can turn to analyses that see depoliticisation not just as a tool or as ‘statecraft’ but also as related to ideas (Hay 2007, 94; see also Jenkins 2011; Kuzemko 2013). In this way decisions to depoliticise are not only tactical and strategic but are often also informed by genuinely held ideas about what is deemed right (see also Hall 1993; Campbell 1998). As such it becomes important to understand which norms become embedded within processes of depoliticisation—for example, in this instance, pro-market ideas about appropriate governance interactions between states and markets.

Embedded pro-market ideas have, in practice, served to negate other sets of ideas about how to govern and stand in contrast to conceptions of politics as the capacity for collective agency and choice underpinned by open and informed deliberation and social interaction (Hay 2007, 65–70; see also Gamble 2000; Jenkins 2011). Such observations on what politics is, or should be, are in some respects similar to scholars studying sustainable energy policy and transitions. It has been observed, for example, that the current energy policymaking ‘technocracy’ needs to abandon neoclassical economic theory and investigate and deliberate much more broadly (Lehtonen and Kern 2009, 107). This claim relates to the notion that because low carbon energy transition is unprecedented it can only come about through knowledge building and learning-by-doing and with the state acting as an informed force for innovation and change (Mazzucato 2013, 5; Lehtonen and Kern 2009). To an extent, therefore, depoliticisation can be used as a tool to help explain why these forms of political institutions have not been utilised in the UK in response to the recognised need to transition to a low carbon economy.

1.1. ‘Marketised’ Depoliticisations

In order to explore the contingent nature of energy depoliticisations and their impacts on the practice of energy and climate politics this article proceeds by separating depoliticisation into three forms that have been particularly evident. The purpose here is not to suggest and or describe alternative forms of depoliticisation but to apply them as heuristics to study these processes and their impacts in practice. Particular attention is paid to identifying ideas that motivated these processes and the kinds of rules and norms about how to govern energy that became embedded as a result.

The first process explored here, labelled ‘marketised depoliticisation’, is closely related to Colin Hay’s ‘Type One’ depoliticisation in that it involves the:

… off-loading of areas of formal political responsibility to the market (through privatisation) (Hay 2007, 82).

To the extent that market actors as a result of privatisation became responsible for the provision of certain goods and services this state-market relationship can be understood as the state seeking to achieve its objectives through markets (see also Burnham 2011, 465). Although energy privatisations arguably also served the purpose of re-filling empty state coffers as well as various private, commercial interests (Wilks 2013, 124–127), decisions to pursue marketised depoliticisation were also informed by sets of economic ideas. These decisions were made within the context of a wider shift from Keynesian to neoliberal economic thinking that had gained much political ground in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Neoliberal economic, and public choice, ideas became influential over economic policy partly in response to the successful characterisation of 1970s economic crises as ‘bureaucratic overload’ and government failure (Hay 2007, 98).

The provision of energy goods and services via publically owned energy companies had increasingly been presented as problematic and as exacerbating problems of overload. Specifically some economists had over the course of the 1970s cast doubt on the adequacy of political rules for achieving ‘efficient allocation of resources’ and on the merit of running utilities in order to achieve political ends such as the redistribution of income and power (Littlechild 1981, 11–12). Some of the economists and politicians that had advanced these ideas became, under the new Conservative government, responsible for the (long) process of privatisation and liberalisation as well as drawing up the new regulatory regime (Helm 2003). In this way the new objective of policy became the establishment and maintenance of economically efficient, freely trading energy markets—but within the context of economic policy as a whole. The task of government became therefore constrained to setting:

…a framework which will ensure that the market operates in the energy sector with a minimum of distortion … (Lawson 1989, 23).

Although the passing of responsibility for energy provision to market actors was by no means straightforward in practice, not least because of the strength of opposition from coal mining unions, by and large oil, gas and electricity companies had been privatised by the mid 1990s (see Helm 2003). As observed by Stephen Wilks privatised companies had considerable assets, which in the case of energy companies had been paid for by the state, and this made them powerful political actors by virtue of their absolute size and their position in the corporate elite (Wilks 2013, 127; see also Smith 2009). Through processes of marketised depoliticisation the role of the state within energy governance shifted, in addition, from one of responsibility for national planning, infrastructure development and energy provision to neutral overseer and upholder of an agreed set of market rules and principles.

Processes of marketised depoliticisation may have served to embed certain economic ideas in practice and to distance the state from the explicit need to provide energy as a public good but there have been other consequences. One is that the private sector became responsible for the typically large energy system investments required to provide reliable energy services—these include exploration and development as well as electricity generation, transmission and distribution. To this extent the UK government became dependent upon the private sector to deliver goods and services upon which the UK population rely heavily to facilitate day-today life. This article will argue, below, that processes of marketised depoliticisation have ultimately contributed to particular asymmetries of power between state and market actors in energy making certain forms of agency problematic in response to overt, new climate and security objectives. This is an argument about political capacity to act to deliver collective good on an absolute and relative basis.

1.2. ‘Technocratic’ Depoliticisation

The second form of depoliticisation that has had an impact on the areas and processes through which UK energy governance decisions have been taken is termed here ‘technocratic’ depoliticisation. This form also stems from Hay’s ‘Type One’ depoliticisation and occurs when an issue area, such as energy, that had been subject to formal political deliberation and accountability becomes displaced to less obviously politicised arenas such as quasi-public or independent bodies (Hay 2007, 83). This form is similar in many respects to the notion of ‘institutional’ depoliticisation (Flinders and Buller 2006, 297–298) but what is emphasised here is the central role of technocratic experts and communities as opposed to majoritarian institutions within governance processes. Technocratic depoliticisation has been applied, for obvious reasons, particularly successfully to issue areas that are considered to be highly technical and complex in nature (Hay 2007, 83). Government actors and civil servants that have espoused this form of depoliticisation often do so on the grounds that (generalist) political actors are simply not qualified to take effective decisions in such technical, expert areas (Interviews 1, 2, 11 and 12). Such arguments are, as discussed in more detail below, somewhat self-fulfilling.

UK energy policy is understood here to have been subject to technocratic depoliticisation during the 1990s under both Conservative and Labour administrations. This is not to say that energy had not previously been depoliticised in this way, indeed it has been argued that nationalised energy companies had operated according to a high degree of technical dominance over decision-making (Helm 2003, 22–23). Furthermore, in 1969 the Ministry of Power was disbanded—albeit a new Department of Energy (DoE) was formed only a few years later in response to the oil crises of 1970s. National energy companies had, however, been put in place with the objective of delivering a collective good in the form of secure and affordable energy services to all UK households and they were also responsible for carrying out a national energy plan (Helm 2003).

Technocratic depoliticisation in the 1980s and 1990s was, however, informed by different ideas and has produced in practice markedly different processes and areas of energy decision making. Of particular relevance this time was the idea that a separation be made in governance terms between energy, as an economic sector, and politics, understood as state planning and public energy (Bromley 1991, 49; Helm 2003, 386). Margaret Thatcher had famously observed at the time that the title Department of Energy ‘… smacks of economic planning whereas our energy needs should be supplied by the market’ (Thatcher in Blackhurst 2004). In 1992, once the process of privatisation had been launched, the DoE was again dissolved and responsibility for energy was placed within a sub-division of the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI). The decision was also taken that there should be an industry regulator, which ultimately became known as Ofgem, but that it should be independent of government.

This arrangement remained in place from 1992 until 2008 when DECC was formed but this fundamental lack of capacity dedicated to energy governance had some particular lasting implications. Over time links to majoritarian institutions, such as Parliament, became more tenuous. There was no longer a Secretary of State for Energy, representation of energy issues at Cabinet level and, over the 1990s, Parliamentary energy debates when they occurred were focused largely on how best to privatise and liberalise energy (see Helm 2003). Energy became increasingly less ‘visible’ as a policy area within majoritarian governance institutions. In this way it increasingly did become a technical sector of the economy suitable to the rigorous quantitative analysis of experts rather than elected representatives of state which further isolated energy from public debate and democratic scrutiny. All this suggests that the way in which these institutions were depoliticised was about embedding limited state involvement rather than equipping energy institutions to identify or respond to societal outcomes of energy policy. As can be seen below the result of such processes was that energy had become the responsibility of technocrats who although more independent from government had firmer links with narrow gas and electricity company interests than with majoritarian politics.

1.3. Non-deliberative Depoliticisation

Non-deliberative depoliticisation as understood here tends to cut across current characterisations of depoliticisation in that it does not sit squarely within any existing definition. There are resonances with Hay’s ‘Type 3’ and with depoliticisation understood as re-enforcing rules and as preference shaping (Flinders and Buller 2006, 299) but with less of an emphasis on citing external pressures and on politics as ‘fate’. This heuristic is closest in sense to Wood and Flinder’s ‘discursive’ depoliticisation, in that language and ideas are important, but again the emphasis here is less on the intention to close down debate and more on explaining why. Non-deliberative depoliticisation in energy refers to a lack of open and informed debate and deliberation within and between actor groups which, in turn, serves to shape and constrain choices. It is inspired by a long tradition of academic and fictional work that has actively critiqued politics as orthodoxy (Orwell 1946; Berlin 1978; Gamble 2000).

Again, the design of political institutions and how they operate is held here to be important to understanding the drivers and impacts of non-deliberative depoliticisation. We can learn more about how institutions can operate to limit deliberation by turning to the work of sociological and discursive institutionalists (Yee 1996; Schmidt and Radaelli 2004). Institutions can and do, in practice, allow or restrict the access of certain social groups to political leaders and bureaucratic officials (Yee 1996, 92) and set the parameters of what people talk about (Schmidt and Radaelli 2004, 197). This is arguably often the case with quasi-public institutions with less public visibility of their decisions and actions. What also becomes important is who is hired, what qualifications they have, what training is received once hired, but ultimately which actors may offer credible information (Hay and Wincott 1998, 954; see also Adler and Haas 1992).

We can see these forms of closed communities in operation in energy—particularly in the 1990s and early to mid 2000s. Ofgem and the Energy Directorate of the DTI were run by groups of likeminded experts and these experts tended to seek advise from other similarly trained groups such as accountancy firms (Mitchell 2008; Carrington 2011; see also Ernst and Young 2006). The Energy Directorate of the DTI and Ofgem were, furthermore, mandated to maintain freely trading, competitive markets thereby protecting consumers (see also Mitchell 2008, 139; Scrase and Ockwell 2009, 42). What is notable here is that these mandates were more about delivering freely trading markets per se and less overtly about delivering energy specific goals such as energy security, sustainability or affordability. In line with such mandates qualification as expert was defined less by in depth technical knowledge of energy markets or infrastructures but by previous, or on the job, training in classical economics and/or statistics (Interviews 1 and 2). This appears to have limited debate and decision making to problem solving within existing frameworks of ideas. As can be seen below personnel assigned to the Energy Directorate of the DTI moved from division to division on the understanding that as long as actors understood basic economic principles they could as easily make decisions about energy as any other sector of the economy (Interviews 5 and 12). In the absence of much specific energy expertise decisions were based on, often bounded, economic models and statistics (Interviews 2 and 15).

Whilst these forms of institutional design did serve to embed rules and limit choices in practice what arguably also happened was that decision-making areas became less able to respond in terms of understanding issues and problems as they arose. As will be seen below, once problems were recognised and new objectives were put in place energy policymaking institutions were less capable of offering non-market solutions hence offering an explanation as to why UK policy has been so ideologically bounded.

2. Depoliticisations and Political Capacities in Energy

Some have argued that although climate change has presented challenges it also, at least theoretically, presents opportunities for new approaches to energy governance and imaginative thinking about how to facilitate the large-scale investments and behavioural changes needed (Smith 2009, 54). This section of the article outlines impacts of depoliticisations on energy decision-making processes that explain the degree to which energy institutions have been slow to innovate and may prove insufficient to deliver the new, energy specific goals adopted in the mid to late 2000s. One example of an energy policy objective that may be missed is energy produced from renewable sources. Whilst growing, the figure remains low, at 4.1% in 2012, versus the UK’s EU 2020 target of 15% (DECC 2013a, 1). Furthermore, in 2012 4.5 million households were still in fuel poverty, a long way off the UK energy policy objective of eradication by 2016 (DECC 2013b). Household electricity and gas prices have risen 66% and 137% respectively between 2001 and 2013 and continue to rise (Which 2013, 8; see also HC ECC (House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee) 2013). Furthermore, energy supply security objectives are undermined by underinvestment in Britain’s ageing generation capacities.

2.1. Embedded Corporate Power

This sub-section will assess how processes of marketised depoliticisation have played out in practice emphasising high degrees of embedded corporate power in energy (see Wilks 2013, 130–132). As already noted above decisions to pass responsibility for energy to the private sector in practice resulted in a situation where private market actors became responsible for the provision of energy goods and services—services that almost every household and business in society depends upon daily. Explanations for corporate power can be found in the decision to pass responsibility for such important services to market actors but also in how the process of privatisation was pursued. In addition to the guiding notion of ‘markets know best’ there was one other, somewhat practical, principal at play during the process of privatising energy companies which was that of making sure that the sector was profitable enough to private investors (Thomas 2006; Wilks 2013). It has been argued that this principal, as well as that of allowing market actors to make decisions about the energy industry, was important to the somewhat controversial decision to allow vertical integration in UK gas and electricity companies (Thomas 2006). Vertical integration, allowing generation and supply assets to be held by one corporation, was not part of the original design of energy market privatisation and liberalisation but was allowed to evolve in a piecemeal fashion as various market actors requested it (Thomas 2006, 587; Rutledge 2010, 6–7).

The UK is serviced now by an oligopoly of six, mainly multinational owned, integrated companies that supply 92% of the domestic electricity market and 75% of the domestic gas market and that hold a high degree of market knowledge and power (Rutledge 2010; Which 2013). ¹ Vertical integration has not only facilitated in-house trading and procurement, with implications for transparency, liquidity and pricing, but also provided the ‘Big 6’ companies with high levels of knowledge and data about UK energy markets and how they operate. This knowledge is lucrative but also, importantly, indispensable to anyone trying to design a sustainable energy transition whilst also meeting affordability and security objectives (Interviews 10, 17 and 21). Gas and electricity companies, furthermore, are not required to share such industry knowledge and data—in fact DECC are soon to use pooled state funds to pay industry for information that they consider vital to making policy decisions because they simply do not have access to it (Civil Service World 2014).

Companies have long realised the value of vertical integration (Rutledge 2010), but political institutions are only now overtly recognising the impact that this has had on the electricity supply industry—not least in terms of constructing barriers to entry to more innovative and sustainable new business models (Ofgem 2014). Incumbent companies, furthermore, use their market and political power to lobby strongly and have been central to consultancy processes that have underpinned new legislation (Friends of the Earth 2011; Interviews 10, 19 and 22).

As observed above, another outcome of passing responsibility to the private sector has been that UK political institutions now rely on private companies to invest in new energy infrastructures. Both energy security and climate change mitigation are dependent upon sufficient investment taking place in capital-intensive infrastructures and new technologies required for security and climate change mitigation (Smith 2009). The scale of this problem is now overtly recognised in that it is estimated that that 20 per cent of UK electricity plant generation capacity is due to close by 2022 whilst there are those that claim that some energy companies, post privatisation, went about sweating their considerable assets instead of investing in new infrastructures (Smith 2009, 54). As a consequence, and in order to deliver only on the objective of energy supply security, DECC now estimates that £110bn of investment in UK infrastructure is required between 2013 and 2020 (Davey 2013).

This all results in a considerable headache for UK energy policymakers—specifically how to deliver new objectives whilst relying on private enterprises that have little incentive to do so. The overriding difficultly here is that, although responsible for delivering energy objectives and implementing policies, gas and electricity companies are not answerable to society as a whole but to multinational parent companies, shareholders and, in a limited sense, to customers. The primary objective of private gas and electricity companies is to make profits, which should preferably grow year on year, and then to either re-invest profits back into the business or deliver ‘surplus’ capital to shareholders in the form of dividends and/or through share buy-back schemes. Multinational companies can, furthermore, decide whether to reinvest in the UK or invest profits elsewhere. In addition, dividends on offer from the Big 6 are generous, their dividend ratios vary from 5% to 7.8%, and one recently claimed that its strategic priority is sustained dividend growth (SSE website). Clearly this use of ‘surplus’ capital, at a time when the UK needs to secure investment in aging generation and low carbon transition, is problematic for government.

What this means is that the political capacity to implement new or alternative policies is constrained by the need to keep incumbents in profit and shareholders happy, and by corporate knowledge and market power. This helps us to understand how these important power asymmetries have had an impact upon the ability of political institutions to deliver on societal objectives, but it also helps us to understand the degree to which marketised depoliticisation has served to benefit narrow interests over the delivery of policy objectives. This observation is of note given that some conceptualisations of depoliticisation are that delegation of responsibility is about achieving state objectives through the market (Burnham 2011, 465).

2.2. Disjunctures Between Majoritarian Institutions and Technocrats

The dissolution of the DoE in 1992, outlined above, and other attempts to place decision-making at arm’s length from government were compounded in the late 1990s and early 2000s by further demotions of energy down the hierarchy of government institutions. It has been noted that personnel dedicated to carrying out the necessary analysis and problem solving in energy were by the late 1990s and early 2000s at a low point, and that the role of ‘Minister for Energy’, which had been passed around on an almost yearly basis, had been downgraded to a status meriting only a ‘part-time minister’, let alone a Secretary of State reporting directly to the Cabinet (Helm 2003, 400; see also Leake 2005). This lack of government capacity provides one explanation as to why it took such a long time, certainly in comparison with countries like Germany, for climate change to make any serious impact on energy policy (see Mitchell 2008). For example although some high profile challenges had emerged, the 2000 Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and the 2002 Policy and Innovation Unit review of energy policy had both recommended quite profound restructurings of energy policy, their recommendations were only partially taken up in the 2003 White Paper (PIU (Policy and Innovation Unit) 2002; RCEP 2000; Mitchell 2008). Even post the establishment of DECC in 2008, tacit recognition that the Energy Directorate of the DTI was insufficient, there have been enduring limitations to understandings of the scale of what is required. One review of DECC has highlighted the fact that whilst it is the second smallest department in government it has the second largest portfolio to deliver and that it does not ‘have the capacity to deliver its portfolio’ (Civil Service 2012, 9).

Decisions to make sure that the regulator, Ofgem, should be ‘independent’ of government have had other implications that take us back to observations above about relative power relations between private and public sectors. In order for Ofgem to make significant changes to some of the regulations governing UK gas and electricity markets, in the form of industry codes, it needs to seek the agreement of energy incumbents (Interviews 10 and 22). For example any alterations to the Balancing and Settlement Code (BSC), that forms a large part of how electricity and gas companies are regulated, must be approved by the BSC Panel. ² The majority of BSC panel members are, however, representatives of the large, incumbent gas and electricity companies (Interviews 10 and 21). As such, even if Ofgem were to suggest radical changes to energy governance these need the approval of the Big 6 and this has in practice tended make Ofgem less ‘independent’ of the interests of these companies. This matters in particular when markets are not delivering on the objectives of policy and when the interests of the Big 6 and government are not aligned.

There have been further consequences for political capacity in energy, and in particular for politics as social interaction. Arm’s-length energy decision-making processes in practice isolated majoritarian institutions from thinking about energy as a policy area. Without a Secretary of State for Energy reporting regularly to Cabinet and or Parliament there were fewer possibilities for ongoing learning and knowledge building through exposure to this complex subject. Those that should serve as the formal channels of communication between society and government, for example MPs, were in these ways left out of the energy loop thereby fulfilling the notion that political actors cannot effectively manage. Such practices have been exacerbated by the extent to which technocratic experts employed within energy institutions continued to believe that politics should not interfere in economic matters such as energy (Interviews 1, 2, 6, 9, 11, 12). In this way economic technocrats set the parameters of how energy was analysed and discussed and the parameters themselves, the methodologies and language used were often also highly technical in nature and unintelligible to lay people, be they MPs or other members of the public (Interview 10). Furthermore, technical experts purposefully placed at arm’s length from government arguably have less incentive or capacity to understand energy policy within the broader objectives of collective social policy (Interviews 10 and 17). This has led to observations that narrow analytical methodologies adopted have resulted in missed opportunities to develop and improve UK energy policy (Helm 2003, 395; Mitchell 2008, 31).

Under conditions of technocratic depoliticisation, moreover, other members of society also have less exposure to energy as an issue area. Households become ‘consumers’ that expect a certain service at a price as part of a business relationship—neither particularly aware of the nature of energy services nor active participants in pursuing a collective goal. The complexities of providing this service, not least in terms of the infrastructures such as transmission grids that they are dependent upon, have become less and less visible to end users. ³ A lack of knowledge about how energy systems work plays heavily to the detriment of those policies that are designed to encourage wider participation in energy demand reduction and efficiency improvement (see Rosenow et al. 2013). It narrows the terms of debate down to pricing and costs in the absence of sufficient and ongoing communication about the complex but hidden energy infrastructures and about how households can alter their energy practices. In that technocratic depoliticisation reduces the visibility of energy and erodes connections between policy and society this has implications for trust in political authority (see Stern 1987, 498). One study has highlighted the erosion of trust in governance and in political abilities to manage sustainable energy trajectories (Rayner 2009).

2.3. Negating Politics as Informed Deliberation and Choice

This last sub-section on the outcomes of depoliticisation emphasises a reduction in the capacity for politics as deliberation and as choice between different solutions to problems. The first point to be made here highlights the way in which parameters set, for example mandates and hiring practices, influence a whole range of outcomes. The tighter the boundaries are set the less possible it is to openly contest, deliberate or to choose from different approaches to governing energy. The way in which Ofgem and the Energy Directorate of the DTI were initially mandated and structured served to embed the idea that the proper role of government was as a regulator of services delivered by market organisations (Wilks 2013, 126). As noted in section 1.3 above in the absence of specific energy objectives technocratic experts tended not to be energy experts but generalist economists and statisticians (Interviews 2, 5, 11, 21). Energy expertise, as a result, has rested more with private actors than with government institutions grappling with the task of redesigning them and there are arguments that this, and high staff turnover, has delayed the identification and implementation of some sustainable energy policies (Interviews 10, 16 and 22). One claim is that a focus on economic variables left technocrats for too long blind to non-economic factors such as human consumption and behaviour or to the need for energy sources such as renewable energy (Mitchell 2008, 31). It has also been observed that although ‘smart meters’, designed to help households become more aware of and efficient in their energy usage, were identified in 2006 as worth pursuing it took a number of years before energy policymakers even understood a range of technical elements of smart meters and how they would work in relation to current energy systems (Interview 22).

Another key to understanding why so little radical energy policy innovation has taken place is that originally, when first faced with the idea of pursuing climate change mitigation objectives, UK policymakers had argued that markets would deliver (Department of the Environment 1990). This faith in markets was to remain prominent within energy decision-making processes for some time but was based on a whole range of uncontested assumptions. For example it was understood that consumers would ‘demand’ renewable energy and companies would therefore have to deliver (IEA (International Energy Agency) 1998, 67), competition would drive renewable energy development (DETR 2000), and freely trading markets were a prerequisite for the provision of energy supply security (Mitchell et al. 2001, 177). Assumptions about how energy should be governed also for some time specifically ruled out government decisions about what mix of energy technologies the UK should have, intervention in markets, or directing energy investments (DTI 2003; see also Mitchell 2008).

Later, in 2003, when energy policy was first allocated energy and climate-specific objectives these were vaguely worded, replete with get out clauses such as ‘where possible’ (DTI 2003, 11), and the assumption remained that markets would deliver. What is important about this assumption is that by accepting climate objectives it was understood that little would need to change in terms of pro-market energy policy (Kuzemko 2013, 111), thereby arguably also vastly underestimating the scale of the problem. Technocrats continued to either remain ignorant of or actively reject other voices that recommended more profound government involvement and change (Interviews 2, 10, 11 and 21; see also Scrase and Ockwell 2009, 38). One interviewee at Ofgem suggested that they designed their review of energy markets, Project Discovery, to make it look as if they had considered more ‘radical’ solutions but were always going to choose instruments that had least impact on freely-trading markets (Interview 11). The lack of ability of DECC and Ofgem staff to think outside the box, as well as knowledge loss due to staff turnover, has recently been recognised and some attempts are now under way to open technocratic eyes to alternatives (Civil Service 2012, 10; Interview 21).

However, it began to become apparent, over the course of the mid to late 2000s, that markets were not delivering on investment in traditional as well as new energy infrastructure, and technology politicians and technocrats were limited to an explanation of ‘market failure’ (see Miliband 2008; Wicks 2009). What is important about this neoclassical economics explanation of climate and energy security problems is that although the appropriate response is government intervention such interventions have been weak and, by design, temporary. Indeed, it has been argued that the conceptualisation of energy-related problems as market failure has in practice limited the response of government to raising the level of market signals and to some low scale interventions (see Mazzucato 2013, 124–126). For example, the recent Electricity Market Reform (EMR) is designed both to pay a set price for clean energy but also to incentivise market players to invest in new (but not necessarily low carbon) capacity. These incentives and interventions are explicitly designed to be temporary:

The reforms in the Energy Bill are specifically designed to move us away from such intervention—and blaze a trail towards competition. That is their ultimate aim (Davey 2013).

In 2013 the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change stated that once new energy and climate frameworks have been put in place government intervention can recede and DECC can be reduced in size (Davey in HC ECC (House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee) 2013). This remains in line with Nigel Lawson’s statement of 1983 that once government frameworks have been put in place markets should be allowed to function with a minimum of distortion.

Temporary and weak interventions and instruments that seek to incentivise investment but not disrupt markets are a far cry from suggestions within sustainable energy policy literatures, such as those put forward by Transitions Management scholars, that energy transition requires ongoing and sustained government capacity and support, knowledge building, learning-by-doing and flexibility (Lehtonen and Kern 2009). One critique is that the UK’s sustainable energy policy is patchy, lacking in vision and small scale, whilst what is needed is the creation of new markets and new relationships between state and private sector institutions (Mazzucato 2013, 120 and 124–6). The lack of ability to do so is seen as causal in the UK’s position as a laggard in development of clean energy and associated technologies behind other countries, such as Germany and China, that are becoming the clean technology leaders of the future (ibid). Conditions of non-deliberation have been shown here to have restricted UK energy policy-making choices in practice and to have limited opportunities for knowledge building and learning-by-doing.

Conclusions

It was suggested in the introduction to this article that two contributions would be made. One has been to offer depoliticisation as a conceptual approach that can help to explain why UK energy policy has been so limited in its response to significant new challenges. Taken together the heuristic forms of depoliticisation applied in this analysis have revealed specific lacks in capacity but also some reasons as to why there has been ideological lock-in related to what rules and norms became embedded. Various aspects of institutional design, such as hiring and training practices and the focus on economics over energy, have mattered not least in that they explain a lack of government energy system knowledge as well as knowledge of the impacts of energy policy on society. The analysis here also shines a light on the gulf that currently exists between those that argue for a central and knowledge-building role for the state in energy transition and the constrained nature of some of the choices made so far in the UK. By trusting in markets to deliver and by under-investing in energy institutions and knowledge the UK has to an extent destroyed its own capacity to deliver transition.

The second contribution is to depoliticisation literatures in terms of arguments about, and empirical evidence of, the collective impacts of depoliticisations on political capacities, potentially including the capacity to meet policy objectives. The evidence here suggests that each form of depoliticisation has been contingent upon, and reinforced by, economic ideas about the appropriate role for states and markets in the field of energy. What has also emerged as important to understanding political capacities has been a consideration of the precise ways in which depoliticisations were pursued in practice. For example it was not only significant that marketised depoliticisation by design passed greater responsibility to private sector actors, but the decision to allow vertical integration also had significant implications for relative political capacities in terms of knowledge and economic power.

It has been necessary, when trying to assess the impact on political capacity, to be clear about how politics is conceptualised here. Politics as capable of deliberation, choice and of delivering collective goods, such as sustainable energy system transitions, requires that energy policymaking institutions be redesigned in multiple ways. Energy as a collective good upon which so many depend remains a highly political subject and transition unprecedented and replete with risks. This combination must surely require dedicated forward planning, greater and more consistent energy knowledge-building within government, less reliance on ‘big’ business to deliver objectives and more emphasis on supporting and providing information for UK publics. In order for government to commit to institutions capable of performing such functions there would need to be some considerable shift in thinking about the benefits of depoliticisation. By explicitly posing questions about depoliticisation in practice and by explaining how it has destroyed certain kinds of institutional capacity this article might assist in such a re-think.