Privatization of the Central Electricity Generating Board
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| Regulator | |
| Industry | Energy |
| Founded | 1957 |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
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Area served
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England and Wales |
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Footnotes / references Broken up into National Grid Company, National Power, Powergen and later Nuclear Electric. |
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The Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) was the cornerstone of the British electricity industry for almost forty years, from 1957 to privatisation in the 1990s.
Because of its origins in the immediate post-war period, when electricity demand grew rapidly but plant and fuel availability was often unreliable, most of the industry saw its mission as to provide an adequate and secure electricity supply, or "to keep the lights on" as they put it, rather than pursuing the cheapest generation route.
It was created in 1957 from the Central Electricity Authority, which had replaced the British Electricity Authority. The Electricity Council was also created at that time, as a policy-making body for the electricity supply industry.
The CEGB was responsible for electricity generation in England and Wales, whilst in Scotland electricity generation was carried out by the South of Scotland Electricity Board and the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board.
The organisation was unusual in that most of its senior staff were professional engineers, but with excellent support in financial and risk-management areas.
Some people feel that it represented the best of government planning, others feel that it had become a monolith that exemplified the worst aspects of central planning and was ripe for reform. It is probably the case that, in its most successful period, up until the mid-1970s, it was managed in a way broadly comparable to large private-sector energy majors such as BP, but that it was late to respond to the changed pattern of energy growth following the second oil crisis.
The CEGB was established by section 2 of the Electricity Act 1957. It consisted of a chairman and seven to nine members, appointed by the Minister of Power, who had experience or capacity in "the generation or supply of electricity, industrial, commercial or financial matters, applied science, administration, or the organisation of workers"
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