If the theme of this book were to be expressed in a single question, it would be something like this: How can societies construct new sets of social institutions flexible enough to adjust both to the uncertainties of the postmodern age and to the new global, national and local concerns for environmental protection?

Its subject matter is somewhat narrower (and more modest) than that, but the question is one to which the present study – of electricity planning by public utilities in three nations – can provide some answers. To be quite specific, the study looks at the way electricity utilities have adapted to the risk and uncertainty pervading their worlds since at least 1973 when the first energy crisis brought discontinuity to what had previously been a stable planning environment. In a sense it is a comparative study of institutional innovation because it takes a state of the art planning technique – least-cost utility planning – as an exemplar and, in a series of case studies, examines whether utilities adopted it (or similar approaches), if so, how readily and if not, why not. It seeks to identify the reasons for each of these responses.

The work attempts to appeal to two sets of readers. First, it seeks to interest those who work either in electric utilities or in government agencies who must deal with the issues of electricity planning and its relationship to matters of institutional design. At a more academic level, the issues the case studies raise about the relationship between society and technologically sophisticated areas of human activity involve some questions central to political science.