Introduction

A growing body of work has recently emerged that applies depoliticisation as an analytical concept, often to explain developments in monetary and financial policy making (Burnham, 2001; Buller and Flinders, 2005; Flinders and Buller, 2006; Hay, 2007; Jenkins, 2011). It argues that responsibility for economic policy making has been passed away, by various means, from government to either quasi or wholly independent bodies resulting in lower degrees of political contestation and less active collective representation of public bodies by majoritarian institutions (Hay, 2007; Jenkins, 2011; Mügge, 2011). This chapter moves beyond the empirical realms of economic policy by exploring UK energy governance through the lenses of (de-) politicisation. UK energy policy making is understood here as having been subject to very deliberate depoliticising processes during the 1980s and 1990s. By some contrast, however, by the late 2000s energy had become somewhat re-politicised and subject to higher degrees of contestation and formal political deliberation. New government institutions had been established in order to steer energy policy towards the achievement of new objectives, of energy security and climate change mitigation.

These changes are notable in that they mark energy policy out from other areas of economic policy making in the UK, and elsewhere, where depoliticising trends arguably continue. Through the application of insights from a second conceptual frame, that of speaking security, it is argued here that energy was politicised partly through the impact of narratives of national energy supply (in-)security. These processes took place at the time of mounting political support for climate change mitigation, Russian energy policy restructurings, the emergence of China as a powerful energy actor, of rising oil and gas prices, and of the Russia–Ukraine gas transit disputes. In addition, the UK was on the brink of becoming an importer of oil and gas after decades as a net exporter. The specific argument here, however, is that renewed public and political interest in energy security, alongside the apparent failure of existing energy institutions to anticipate, explain or address energy security issues, highlighted a need for institutional change.

Combining conceptual insights from literatures on depoliticisation and securitisation may be novel, but it is also not entirely unproblematic.