Renegotiating the Social Contract: The 'Demand-Side Management Revolution' and the Restructuring of the American Electric Utility Industry, l978-l992

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Dr. Hirsh is examining the creation of a new consensus emerging between electric utilities and consumers that results in increased energy efficiency, lower customer costs, greater corporate profits, and enhanced environmental quality. In contrast to the acrimonious relationship between utilities and customers that existed in the 1970's, the new "social contract" has at its core the increasing sophistication of so-called "demand-side management" (DSM) technologies. A catch-all phrase that subsumes conservation measures and high-efficiency, end-use technologies, demand-side management curbs customer requirements for electricity and reduces the need for utilities to construct power plants, with all the attendant environmental savings. In a novel fashion that promises universal rewards, activist groups, utilities, and other players in the late 1980's seized upon DSM technologies to reach a new consensus. Dr. Hirsh's study is focusing on technological, regulatory, political, and managerial events that have coalesced to create a new social contract within the utility community. Employing oral history and documentary sources, his work extends research that deals with the restructuring of the utility industry that resulted from technological and regulatory innovations in the 1970's and 1980's. Dr. Hirsh's goal is to interpret the utility industry's transformation since the 1970's as the result of a process in which various players negotiated their contractual roles and responsibilities. The study promises to become not just a history of these events but a useful planning tool for policy makers and utility managers.