It is often said in energy research circles that the UK needs a national energy lab, on the pattern of other countries such as the US (the US, obviously, has a network of such labs – the UK, being a smaller country, would presumably just settle for one lab).
I think it is worth having a fresh look at how the UK has used taxpayer-funded research to help secure its supplies of energy over the years. I believe this illustrates the contingency involved in creating institutional bases for application-oriented R&D – and why establishing realistic, clear-cut purposes might be so important to such efforts.
What follows are just some initial thoughts and speculations, focused as ever on the institutions, & based on my incomplete general knowledge. It therefore cannot be taken too seriously. I go as far back as the oil crisis, no further.
A final point before embarking. It is possible – although really this is just a guess on my part – that the idea of ‘energy research’, as a vital type of research that taxpayers ought to fund, emerged from the oil crisis of the 1970s. Prior to this, energy research was often no more than the study of coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power. The definition of the term has therefore possibly reflected the structure of the ‘energy’ sector at a given point, and the bureaucratic organization of governments and the private firms.
Oil crisis: UK government R&D institutions
I know exactly zero about what the UK’s R&D responses were to the oil crisis, but it seems an important topic. Institutionally speaking, though, I think at the time of the oil crisis, we can say the UK had four main nationalized entities for research on energy, namely, the UK Atomic Energy Establishment (UKAEA), the Electricity Council, the Gas Council, and the National Coal Board. Research on oil was the province of BP and Shell, the part-private, part-nationalized (in BP’s case) firms. It is worth recalling also that companies like Shell were, in the mid-twentieth century, diversified chemical firms that conducted R&D on many downstream topics such as pesticides – today this would probably be called sector coupling or energy systems integration (!).
The ‘drins [a type of insecticide] represented the Group’s [Shell’s] ideal chemical product. They were well protected by patents, hydrocarbon-based, and research-intensive; they were modern and glamorous in offering an instant, technical solution to ancient scourges of mankind; they fitted in well with other manufacturing processes; and they combined low volume with stupendously high margins….in 1965, a fairly typical year, pesticides generated 14% of the sales and 23% of the profits from the chemical function.
Howarth & Jonker, 2007, A History of Royal Dutch Shell, vol. 2.
The UKAEA was closely tied-up with nuclear weapons; the other institutions had more, broadly, commercial motives. It is hard to see this plethora of research activities as anything other than disparate and mostly unconnected. This being said, there are hints that there was at least some exchange of people and ideas between these different research loci. A prominent example is the recruitment of engineers from the nuclear industry to the expanded Gas Council research laboratories, which were established in the late 1960s.
In 1972, perhaps arguing for a British research response to the oil crisis, one UKAEA official, Keith Dawson, proposed a national energy technology lab, with a focus on ‘fuel cells, advanced batteries, and synthetic fuels’ (Dawson apparently opposed research on solar, wind, and tidal energy, but was overruled).
Dawson’s proposal was never funded – but the idea of coordinating activities was picked up – via a new entity called the Energy Technology Support Unit (ETSU) – created in 1974, with Dawson as director, and a budget of about £5m p.a. (today’s prices). Its function was to manage research programs on renewable energy and energy conservation. The majority of projects managed by ETSU were carried out by external organisations in academia and industry.
It could be said: who in the nuclear and coal industries of the time wanted actual work on renewable energy, over and above a certain degree of going through the motions to satisfy the zeitgeist (research as a form of masterful inactivity). Salter’s Duck is often quoted in this regard. But the view has (possibly) been challenged a little by recent archival research (Wilson, 2012) which showed there was genuine enthusiasm for renewable energy among some scientists employed in the British nuclear industry of the time (but it was evidently not enough to sustain proposals for a very costly national lab).
Shock: privatization
After the oil crisis, the next big external shock for taxpayer-funded energy R&D, and probably the entirety of the British state, was privatization (1980s & 1990s).
When the energy industry was privatized, R&D laboratories associated with the various state-owned entities (gas, electricity) were often allocated to successor, private firms, such as PowerGen & British Gas. These R&D facilities were, it seems, mostly closed within a few years (noting exceptions which were sold as going concerns to overseas firms). If one casts the net very widely, one can also observe other privatization models, e.g., creating independent consultancy firms from the R&D entity, and in one case, a not-for-profit. The table at the bottom of this article reveals the scale of that process.
AEA Technology, a spin-out from the UK Atomic Energy Authority that was privatized (as a PLC) in 1996, seems to have absorbed a number of entities, e.g., ETSU, British Rail Research Division & Electricity Council Research Centre; AEA Technology went into administration in 2012 (some activities variously bought out by firms such as NS Technisch Onderzoek, Aspen, & Ricardo). Possibly AEA Technology was the closest the UK got to a ‘rational’ disposal of energy R&D assets as a unified entity (but it did not survive the logic of being a PLC for long).
Overall, though, it seems privatization was a haphazard process; R&D very much an after-thought, without a framework for energy R&D (or even a notion that energy R&D might be a national strategic asset that had been built up at great expense?). Possibly no one sat down to consider what energy challenges would arise over the coming decades, & what UK R&D structures would be needed to respond to them; this despite Thatcher’s alleged (and much trumpeted) foresight in regard to climate change, not to mention her own scientific background.
The above might be an unfair characterization; I simply cannot say as I have not put in the work to look at the record. A glance into the parliamentary record, dated 1988, shows there was a debate, at least, on the future of electricity R&D, with a Conservative MP, Michael Colvin, pointing out that little discussion had been devoted to the topic in the privatization white paper. The relevant minister, Peter Morrison, replied that he felt R&D was important but he did not intend to hold further discussions on it:
[T]o embark on a formal consultation process through issuing a consultative paper could well have quite a contrary effect. We would run the risk of bureaucracy halting this exciting process of change. It was, I think, Chairman Mao who referred to letting a hundred flowers blossom. I might share little else of his philosophy, but that seems to me similar to what we are trying to achieve.
One can argue about the salience of a good deal of the research reported in the table at the end of this article; but evidently a considered approach to restructuring was absent for electricity (based on the above quotation). Perhaps the UK did not need energy R&D (having secured cheap natural gas from its own continental shelf). It is worth noting that investment in R&D concerned with alternative (non-fossil) energy resources generally declined through the early 1980s across the IEA members as the oil price fell; credibility of nuclear power in particular was undermined by the Three Mile Island (1979) & Chernobyl (1986) disasters (citing Venn, 2002, The Oil Crisis, pp. 58-59). UK was not therefore probably unique in cutting R&D intensity.
It could also be seen as in-keeping with Thatcher’s policy; she may have sought, for possibly legitimate economic reasons, to reduce the research intensity of the UK economy, which had in any case been considered too high. So-called near market R&D was apparently anathema except in selected areas; ‘blue skies’ research was prioritized (reference: Agar, 2019, Science Policy under Thatcher).
One can envisage counterfactual histories, however. Regulation of the private sector has been one of the biggest spurs for taxpayer-funded scientific activities designed to assure safety and efficacy on behalf of consumers (e.g., food, drugs, vaccines, & medical devices). Therefore, hypothetically, Ofgem, the regulator, might have absorbed some of the R&D activities; but as far as I am aware, it did not. (Today, the regulator is certainly not in a technical position to weigh in on the merits of different energy storage technologies, say, not even in principle, because it lacks the deep scientific expertise.)
With the destruction of the British coal industry through the 1980s & 1990s, finishing the decline that had already set in – coupled to privatization of the electricity and gas supplies, and the withdrawal of government of interest from civil nuclear, the net result was that at the end of the twentieth century, the UK government had little energy R&D it could directly wield (i.e., taxpayer-funded entities).
Crisis: global warming
A new crisis, global warming, was the context for a new wave (?) of proposals in the early 2000s for an energy research response. What emerged through the mid to late 2000s and into the 2010s was perhaps less than what might have been hoped, & very much in keeping with the research management agenda of its time.
Principally, it lay with an expanded investment program of energy research in the universities (reflecting the longer term preference in UK research funding), coupled with a public-private partnership called the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI), which was funded to the tune of £60m p.a.
Later, two Catapult centers were added, charged with supporting knowledge transfer into the private sector (in energy systems, and offshore renewable energy). We should also add to the mix the New & Renewable Energy Centre (NaREC). This was established very briefly on a regional basis in the north east of England, in 2002, and had plausible similarities to German Länder research institutions. It ended up in the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult when the parent body, the Regional Development Agency (RDA), was scrapped in 2010.
Alongside these efforts, stood an infrastructure of preexisting taxpayer-funded institutions that had survived the privatization drive of the 1980s & 1990s, such as the National Nuclear Laboratory, National Physical Laboratory, British Geological Survey, and so forth. These contained within them energy-related research. On top of these, various public-private funding vehicles that appear germane, such as the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) and the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) – both created 2013 as part of a renewed industrial strategy agenda.
Indeed, looking across the UK, there are indeed many of the elements of a national energy lab, at least one that could be imagined or even conjured on paper. But of course it does not really exist because these activities are not connected. Even in principal, there is no legal form that creates a whole.
The idea for an actual national energy lab, while always present and often supported by scientists, did not take off. One can speculate that it never garnered wide enough political support, most importantly from the private sector, to get built. The oil & gas industry might not want or need such a lab – neither might nuclear. Universities, by the 2000s, powerful actors in the taxpayer-funded research enterprise, might not be keen to see cash handed to other parties. The closest the UK got was probably the ETI, but momentum was lost for reasons that remain unclear, and the institution was closed in 2019.
Conclusion
Crisis appears important in shaping the taxpayer-funded research response to energy (oil crisis, privatization, global warming). Yet, on closer inspection, I would not push this too far; the case for doing taxpayer-funded energy research seems perhaps rather more fluid when looked at from the snail’s eye view.
The activities undertaken in the coal, electricity, and gas sectors were, all, presumably, to support the day-to-day operational activities of the industries concerned. In the case of coal, it was of course famously focused on getting coal from ever more inaccessible and uneconomic seams. All that being said, I simply don’t know enough about what was done or why to make many comprehensive statements.
Nuclear research carried a major national security element, and was a source of national pride and gave a sense of power and purpose on the world stage, rather than being an economically necessarily activity. Research in the oil industry was fundamentally about exploiting new reserves and/or extracting greater upstream value. The latter purposes recall, as noted above, the diversified chemical manufacturing undertaken by Shell in the mid-twentieth century. These varied aspects ought to fit into the story somewhere.
Renewable energy research, for its part, was undertaken for environmental reasons, and because it was thought to be morally valuable on the political left, as an alternative form of science – yet it was aristocrats & landowners, not workers, who created a private research station germane to that topic, at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Wales (1973). Stories of the left, class, & environmentalism perhaps fit somewhere as well.
A diverse mix of reasons, therefore, to do energy research – practical, national pride, economic, moral – which have very recently begun to coalesce around climate change, but only partially so.
The actual operational problems of industry, which would have been embedded in the research activities of the Gas Council, say, are now often missing from taxpayer-funded activity. In effect, it could be said that taxpayer R&D activities, in principle application oriented, have increasingly operated in a vacuum, and have become academic (literally and figuratively) – forever in search of potential clients. Attempts to subsume activities to what are quite abstract goals, notably climate change but also macroeconomic gain for the UK, have perhaps only been partially successful. Generating R&D, but for which clients, and with what goal in mind?
The government agencies responsible for energy research might not be attuned to spotting potentially rewarding avenues of research, and backing them properly, because no one knows what they really want. Again, the issue of having no clear purpose, and no obvious client, makes it hard to understand what matters, and what can be abandoned. From this perspective, perhaps making a collective enterprise of taxpayer-funded energy research looks like something of a cultural failure.
Privatization was an age ago, but its ghosts still hover over the whole enterprise; I would say there has been no greater crisis for UK energy research. Perhaps, indeed, the UK R&D community has not yet fully come to terms with that dramatic period. At the present time, due to the impacts of privatization, the lack of properly established institutional bases seems marked. Hence, perhaps, the refrain from some quarters for a national lab.
Regrettably, despite the release of detailed material on the achievements of ETI, I am not aware of a word written on why the institution was closed (apart from the fact its designated life-span apparently ran out – not a strategic reason). Yet it seems important from an ex-ante perspective to ask why the UK’s one attempt at building a national lab lasted only a decade. I mean, knowing the details might help us decide if another push for a national lab would be worthwhile from the taxpayers’ perspective.
One might also ask why NaREC was broken up, not reinforced (the answer that it was shut because its parent body, RDA, was shut, again implies a complete absence of strategic thought). NaREC had resemblances to a national energy lab, but was indeed designed, run, and governed, on a regional basis, making it an intriguing phenomenon, akin to the German Länder research institutions. It could have evolved in new directions.
Hard to know if taxpayer-funded energy research is really in the best shape as it enters a period of environmental crisis – when in principle it should be central to the conversation. It might not matter. Energy technology can be, and is now largely, bought from overseas; there is no compelling case for indigenous research even from the carbon perspective.
Fate of UK energy research entities after privatization of parent organization
Note there is no reason to believe these activities were connected at the time; this list is compiled with hindsight based on my contemporary conceptions (essentially anything that seemed germane to me, i.e., electricity, gas, & nuclear; some transport, & buildings-related & engineering R&D entities). As such, it is a-historical & should just be treated as hypothetical. List is also highly incomplete and might contain substantial errors.
| Entity | Before privatization | After privatization |
| UK Atomic Energy Authority | Established 1954 by UK government | Not privatized although functions changed; some bodies such as Sellafield Ltd. & Nuclear Decommissioning Authority de-merged but retained in state sector; others (e.g. AEA Technology) privatized |
| Buildings Research Establishment | Established 1921 by UK government; absorbed Forest Products Research Station 1972 & Fire Research Station 1994 | Moved out of government 1997; now operates as charitable trust |
| Transport & Road Research Laboratory | Established 1993 by UK government | Privatized 1996; now operates as private limited firm |
| Electricity Council Research Centre | Established by Electricity Council 1965 | Absorbed by AEA Technology (?) |
| Appliance Testing Laboratories | Established by Electricity Council; date unknown | n.d. |
| British Rail Research Division | Established by British Railways Board 1964 | Transferred to AEA Technology 1996; remnants sold to venture capital 2006 |
| Engineering Research Station | Established 1964 by Gas Council | Privatized as part of British Gas 1986; closed 1993 with elements transferred to British Gas Technology; itself later span out as Advantica; elements subsequently sold to DNV GL (Norway) |
| Watson House | Established by Gas, Light & Coke Company 1926; later nationalized & incorporated into Gas Council | See line above |
| London Research Station | Established by Gas, Light & Coke Company 1924; later nationalized & incorporated into Gas Council | See line above |
| Midlands Research Station | Established 1951 by Gas Council | See line above |
| Online Inspection Centre (OLIC) | Operated by Gas Council; establishment date unknown | Transferred to British Gas 1986; later to PII Pipeline Solutions (joint venture between GE Oil & Gas & Qatar Petroleum) |
| Coal Utilisation Research Laboratories (CURL) | Established by British Coal Board 1945; closed 1984 | None (had already been closed) |
| Coal Research Establishment | Established by British Coal Board 1947 | Shut 1997 due to end of British Coal Board |
| Mining Research and Development Establishment | Established by British Coal Board date unknown | Closure date unknown |
| Berkeley Nuclear Laboratories | Established CEGB date unknown | n.d. |
| Marchwood Engineering Laboratory | Established by CEGB date unknown | Transferred to PowerGen; closed 1989 |
| Central Electricity Research Laboratories | Established by CEGB 1962 | n.d. |
| Energy Technology Support Unit (ETSU) | Established by UKAEA 1974 | Transferred to AEA Technology 1996; AEA went into administration 2002; elements transferred to Ricardo |
| National Maritime Institute | Established 1976 by UK government | Moved out of government 1985 & renamed British Maritime Technology (later BMT Group), an engineering consultancy (business structure: company limited by guarantee) |
| British Shipbuilding Research Association | Established 1962 merging various industry research associations; research station at Wallsend (Tyneside) | See line above |
| National Engineering Laboratory (NEL) | Established 1948 by UK government | Transferred to TÜV SÜD 1995 (known as TÜV SÜD NEL) |
| Fuel Research Station | Established 1919 (East Greenwich & Thorntonhall). Closed 1958 (some functions transferred to Warren Spring Laboratory, Stevenage) | Closed 1994 with ‘some staff’ transferring some staff to AEA Technology, forming National Environmental Technology Centre (NETCEN). |
| Water Research Centre | Established in 1927 as the Water Pollution Research Board | Privatized in 1989; acquired by RSK Group in 2020 (RSK Group also acquired ADAS) |
Note on sources
How little we seem to actually know synthetically about the various elements of energy R&D – how they interrelated through time, how they changed at the level of bureaucratic detail – even simply what happened. At a basic level, it would be useful to know the budgets involved, and headcount, for example.
The history of the nuclear & coal industries have all been told to some degree, although that history is confined to books written decades ago, and largely forgotten (e.g., the multi-volume official histories of the British Coal Board, and the nuclear industry). Renewable energy was, of course, until very recently, mere curiosity. The only history of British government research responses to renewable energy I am aware of is the University of Glasgow PhD thesis previously cited.
Less information still perhaps, is available about research activities in the electricity and gas supply/distribution sectors. For instance, the only account I have read about research in the gas industry was published by retired gas engineers in 1994 (see here – looking at the entities associated with the Gas Council). We learn from this obscure but extremely detailed collection of documents, for example, about a legendary engineer called Denise Durand, and her crucial role in British research on ‘the structural aspects of reforming plants’ – a shaft of light on a part of the energy research enterprise that does not feature in many contemporary discussions.
Coal R&D focused on such topics as getting coal from ever harder to reach seams. Once spectacular technical innovations, e.g. the Anderton Shearer Loader (as given top billing by Townsend in a volume edited by Pavitt), emerged from the British Coal Board. Few remember such matters now; fewer still care. It remains hard to grasp the significance of it all because it feels very much from another age. When we move into the more recent period, after privatization, what happened becomes sketchy for other reasons, because the official histories of the nationalized industries cease.
Notes:
Sources include my own analysis alongside institutional websites, official histories, & unofficial websites & histories written by retired staff of the entities noted; Grace’s Guide; Wikipedia; UK National Archives; Agar, 2019, Science Policy under Thatcher; Helm, 2003, Energy, the State, & the Market: British Energy Policy since 1979; & Parker, 2009 & 2013, The Official History of UK Privatization (interestingly-enough, commissioned by Prime Minister Tony Blair).
Rush, 1980, The broad base of technical change in the gas industry, in: Technical Innovation and British Economic Performance. ‘Whereas the ‘luck’ of discovering natural gas at one’s doorstep has assured the current position of the gas industry, the broad base of R&D activity, quite unlike the ‘narrow front’ of the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s nuclear programme…has enabled the gas industry to capitalize rapidly on new technological advances and unexpected reserves, because of experience gained in previous developments. The ability of the industry to maintain this position after its current reserves are depleted will depend heavily on the continuation of the R&D strategy.’
Johnson, 2015, “Turn on the Sunshine”: A History of the Solar Future (University of Washington)
Utiger, 1995, Never Trust an Expert: Nuclear Power, Government and the Tragedy of the Invergordon Aluminum Smelter (LSE)
Ross, 1984, Hot hole freeze, in: Undercurrents
Works of Gordon MacKerron:
MacKerron, 1996, What can we learn from the British nuclear power experience? in: The UK Energy Experience: a model or a warning?
MacKerron, 1992, Arguments against nuclear power, in: Physics Education
Science Think Tank 