ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some major impacts of egalitarian pressures and focuses on nuclear energy and renewable energy technologies, especially solar photovoltaic (pv) and wind power. It discusses some overall trends and in particular the development of egalitarianism in energy politics relating to nuclear power and renewable energy. The chapter also focuses on early developments in this field and then discusses more recent developments and the influence of egalitarianism. It shows how egalitarianism shifted the contours of debate and practice of technology. The egalitarian basis of the wind cooperatives–serving local needs, locally owned for sustainable energy purposes on a decentralised basis–was both a political basis and the initial market for supporting the technology. As the industry developed in Denmark, international markets began to open up for export of Danish wind turbines. The first was in California in the mid 1980s to supply machines for the so-called 'wind rush'.
