Alternative Energy Strategies for the United Kingdom Revisited: Market Competition and Sustainability

Energy and electricity demand forecasts for Britain made in the late 1970s by a research team from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), under the leadership of Gerald Leach, are assessed with the benefit of hindsight. These researchers broke the energy market down into some 400 end-use, fuel, and appliance categories. They then assessed the potential for energy saving in physical terms, using available technical fixes, for each category. The resulting “bottom-up” projecitons of energy consumption departed from the historic correlation with economic growth, or “top-down” approach. It enabled the IIED team to postulate an alternative, low energy strategy for the United Kingdom to 2025. This study subsequently had a great influence on energy planning elsewhere in the industrialized world, although it was not without its detractors.The IIED energy demand projections are reviewed in the context of both the greatly increased market competition in the UK from 1979 onward, and the need to achieve sustainable development. It is shown that, although total primary energy consumption in the mid-1990s was much in line with the forecasts in the Leach report, the reasons for this and the structure of the newly competitive energy market are quite different from that originally postulated. However, the critics of the IIED team did little better. Long-term energy projections (25–50 years) as one-off, static exercises appear to be of little value for energy planning purposes. They can, as in the case of the Leach report, be a great source of data and ideas, as well as stimulating debate about new strategies. It is argued that rolling projections using a rather broad, sectoral approach that is continuously updated at not greater than five-year intervals, in a similar manner to econometric forecasts, are more useful for energy planning purposes.     

The future of the mobile phone business

One of the fastest growing technologies of our times is that of mobile phones. In this article we use the assumption that the diffusion of mobile technology, as measured by the number of active mobile accounts, follows the well known S-curve of natural growth in competition systems. The accuracy of the logistic fit is tested against actual data for the whole world, Europe, China and the GSM system. Using the produced models predictions concerning the future of mobile business are deliberated.According to these models active mobile accounts around the globe are expected to grow from 1.7 billion in 2004 to approximately 2 billion in 2008, reaching a peak penetration of 29.2%. Growth barriers, apart from the age of the potential user, are also low income and extreme poverty. Europe, early adopter of mobile technology and leader in active mobile accounts against all other regions in the world, has apparently reached a peak with almost every European, apart from the very young or very old, using a mobile phone. The mobile market in China is anticipated to exceed 500 million active accounts and may increase even further depending on the economic and social reform that is currently under way in that part of the world. GSM will most likely remain the leading mobile technology in the future as it is today.The growth process for the world, Europe, and the GSM system is almost completed and during this stage instabilities may occur before the potential emergence of a new wave of growth.     

Where do the new U.S. immigrants live?

"Analyzing the location choices of the post-1964 U.S. immigrants results in three main findings: (1) these immigrants are more geographically concentrated than natives of the same age and ethnicity and reside in cities with large ethnic populations; (2) education plays a key role in location choice, reducing geographic concentration and the likelihood of being in cities with a high concentration of fellow countrymen and increasing the probability of changing locations after arrival in the United States; (3) internal migration within the United States occurs more frequently among immigrants than natives and facilitates the process of assimilation for the more educated individuals."     

Book reviews

Innovation and Industrial Strength in the UK, West Germany, United States and Japan Joan Cox &; Herbert Kriegbaum London, Policy Studies Institute, 1989, 168pp. Industrial Societies After the Stagnation of the 1970s. Taking Stock from an Interdisciplinary Perspective Burkhard Strumpel (ed.) Berlin, de Gruyter, 1989, 313pp.

The Social Basis of the Microelectronics Revolution Alfonso Hernan Molina Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1989, xxi + 260pp., £25.00 h/b (also avail-able in p/b)

Innovation and Technology Transfer in Japan and Europe: Industry-Academic Relations Glynn 0. Philips (assisted by Michael Hughes) London, Routledge, 1990, 282pp.) £45.00

Banking 1992-A Eurostudy Special Report Ian Gillespie (ed.) I,ondon, Eurostudy Publishing, 1990, 162pp., $£60 ($99)