ABSTRACT

Urbanist Stephen Graham summarizes by noting that "the resilience of infrastructures may be severely compromised as they are actively reorganized to maximize profit" and the liberalization of infrastructures "is disruptive to reliable services". This chapter considers another more academic history by Finnish political scientist Ilkka Ruostetsaari; academic studies about electricity deregulation particularly in the closely related energy regimes in Sweden, Norway, and also in mainland Europe. In Finnish energy policy, the oil crises of the 1970s had motivated two seemingly quite different responses. One was that there should be as low as possible dependence on energy markets on a single provider. The Finnish act enacted statutory, national and regional planning systems of electricity supplies. The electricity market liberalization was in its turn initiated in 1990 by the Finnish Ministry of Trade and Industry by founding an Electricity Utility Commission, followed by an Electricity Act Working Group in 1993.