World Power Conference Research Articles

Speaking for the ‘world power economy’: electricity, energo-materialist economics, and the World Energy Council (1924–78)

AbstractThe emergence of a field of global energy policy is usually traced back to the events around the 1973–74 oil embargo. This article provides a prehistory to this by tracing the genealogy of the ‘global energy economy’. This genealogy is reconstructed through the lens of the World Power Conference (WPC, today the World Energy Council, WEC), a non-governmental international organization founded by a British electro-technical engineer in 1924. In a comparison with the engineering of ‘natural forces’ in the nineteenth-century steam economy, I argue that electricity, and particularly large electrical systems, not only changed the meaning of power and institutionalized a regular documentation of the ‘power economy’, but enabled and concentrated ownership of the ‘forces of nature’ as a productive factor. This more comprehensive view of the role of electricity in the economy gave rise to an energo-materialist economics among the electro-technical engineers, technicians, and planners whom the WPC assembled. The WPC imagined itself as the centre of calculation of this ‘global energy economy’, initiating international standardization and complementing the statistics of international organizations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations. As the integration of all ‘energies’ in one statistical model required conversion factors across very different technical processes, it took the urgency of the oil crisis for the WEC to compile a global energy balance, thus statistically ‘representing’ the state of the ‘global energy economy’.

Internationalism and Engineering in UNESCO during the End Game of Empire, 1943-68.

When UNESCO was founded in 1945 the organization aimed to become a pivotal player in international collaboration in the field of engineering. UNESCO based its engineering initiatives on the World Engineering Conference, an organization espousing a politically motivated "technocratic internationalism" and on the World Power Conference, an organization promoting a business-friendly stance of "engineering internationalism." These competing models for international collaboration curtailed UNESCO's institutional ambitions. UNESCO's position was further weakened by fierce opposition from British engineering institutions that pursued a Commonwealth institutional framework in direct opposition to UNESCO. This article unravels the intricate connections between empire and internationalism that shaped UNESCO's engineering agenda during the first post-war decades. It demonstrates how competing forms of internationalism, mounting cold war tensions, and the continuous influence of a British empire-based opposition ultimately forced UNESCO to abandon its technocratic internationalist ambitions and settle for a modest coordinating role in international technical collaboration.

The work of the hydroelectric plants section at the Seventh World Power Conference

The work of the hydroelectric plants section at the Seventh World Power Conference

Seventh Congress of the World Power Conference (WOREC-VII)

Seventh Congress of the World Power Conference (WOREC-VII)

Some results of the Seventh Plenary Meeting of the World Power Conference

Some results of the Seventh Plenary Meeting of the World Power Conference

VII Plenary Meeting of the World Power Conference (WPC)

VII Plenary Meeting of the World Power Conference (WPC)

Delegates and Guests at the Seventh Congress of the World Power Conference

Delegates and Guests at the Seventh Congress of the World Power Conference

Seventh World Power Conference

Seventh World Power Conference

The Sun and the windmill. World Power Conference Sectional Meeting, Madrid, 5th–9th June 1960

The Sun and the windmill. World Power Conference Sectional Meeting, Madrid, 5th–9th June 1960

World Power Conference

1958年9月にカナダのモントリオールで開かれた世界動力会議カナダ部会に出席して実際に見聞した会議の模様がのべられている。会議の主要議題は「動力およびエネルギの生産と輸送およびその利用における経済的動向」というもので, 国際間および国内における輸送燃料の種類と輸送方法の変遷と現在の状況, 鉄道輸送運賃の問題, 輸送機関のエネルギ使用の近代化としてディーゼル化, 直流電化, 交流電化に対する各国の実情に応じてのそれらの得失の比較などに関する報告が概観されている。

The World Power Conference. Twelfth Sectional Meeting in Montreal, 7th to 11th September 1958

The World Power Conference. Twelfth Sectional Meeting in Montreal, 7th to 11th September 1958

MEETINGS, MEETINGS, AND MORE MEETINGS

WE WRITE THESE COMMENTS IN MONTREAL as the Society of Chemical Industry (Great Britain) opens its annual meeting in Canada. It has been 20 years since SCI last held a similar meeting in the warm, friendly atmosphere of Canadian hospitality. The ACS has just concluded its fall national meeting with a record attendance for Chicago gatherings. The Second UN International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy ended two weeks of deliberations at Geneva at the same time, as did the World Power Conference, an international meeting of experts in nuclear and all other types of energy, here in Montreal. Although scientists and technologists temporarily abandoned laboratories for conference table and lecture room, research in chemistry and other physical sciences has indeed been further stimulated by the vast amount of exchange of information which has gone on. Unfortunately we can be in only one place at a time despite many fantastic rearrangements in our ...

World Power Conference

World Power Conference

The World Power Conference

The World Power Conference

Solar energy machines: engineering and economic aspects of the principle of selective radiation : Tabor, H. Paper presented at the 5th World Power Conference, Vienna, 1956. 14 pp.

Solar energy machines: engineering and economic aspects of the principle of selective radiation : Tabor, H. Paper presented at the 5th World Power Conference, Vienna, 1956. 14 pp.

Recent Fuel Techniques Appeared in the 5th World Power Conference and the International Conference on Chemical Engineering in the Coal Industry

筆者は本年6月ウィーンで開かれた第5回世界動力会議, つづいてイギリスで開催された石炭工業に関する化学工学会議に出席し, さらにルールを中心とするドイツ石炭化学工業をつぶさに視察し, これらの会議に現われた研究の成果ならびに工業活動の模様を見聞したところと併せて詳細に説明した。これによつて欧洲の現在の燃料技術に関する活動の状況を充分に知ることがてきる。とくに筆者の注目を引き, 詳細に報告されたもののうち主なるものは英国石炭研究所Idris Johns氏のコークスの配合と家庭用無煙燃料製池のための石炭熱処理に関する研究と「石炭の有効利用の最近の進歩」と題しドイツにおける石炭活用の最近の状況を説明されたドイツ石炭協会のReerink氏の報告である。

The Fifth World Power Conference

The Fifth World Power Conference

Fifth World Power Conference, Vienna

Fifth World Power Conference, Vienna

World Power Conference: Report for 1954

World Power Conference: Report for 1954

World Power Conference Sectional Meeting

World Power Conference Sectional Meeting