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Traditional energy histories have treated electrification as an inevitability: the assumption has been that making cheap energy supply readily available for the masses required the energy efficiency uniquely attainable by large-scale networked electricity grids. While our account does not question that assumption, such a rationale can only explain the onset of electrification for contexts in which large scale electricity grids are already accessible to all. It cannot explain the earliest phase of electrification: what motivated the take up of electricity before such grids and their attendant economics actually existed to make it affordable and indeed competitive? We focus on the case of England before its National Grid was launched in 1926, a time when such alternatives as coal or its by-product coal-gas offered energy in a form that was cheaper or more convenient than stand-alone electrical installations and highly localised electricity infrastructures. Our initial aim is to survey a range of cultural rather than technocratic reasons for the early take-up of electricity in the 1880s to 1890s, treating it then as a luxury rather than a commonplace utility. In doing so, we return to Thomas Hughes' seminal Networks of Power (1983) to examine how far the growth of electrical power supply was shaped not just by engineers and politicians that predominate in his account, but by old-money inherited aristocracy that Hughes touches upon only briefly. Specifically we investigate how the nascent electrical industry looked to these powerful wealthy aristocratic technophiles, male and female, to serve as 'influencers' to help broaden the appeal of domestic electricity as essential to a desirable life-style of glamorous modernity.

In a New Light explores the vital place of women in the shift to fossil fuels that spurred the Industrial Revolution, illuminating the variety of ways in which gender and energy intersected in women's lives in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe and North America. Together these essays deepen our understanding of the significance of gender in the history of energy, and of energy transitions in the history of women and gender

O propósito deste trabalho é avançar em direção ao desenvolvimento de um marco analítico que ajude a avaliar as parcerias público-privadas, tanto à luz do conceito geral, como de propostas específicas concretas. Para isso, inicia-se o artigo com um breve caso para ilustrar o problema de modo geral e, em seguida, desenvolve-se um marco analítico para ajudar o setor público a aprender como realizar suas responsabilidades de due diligence (checagem) de forma mais eficiente.Palavras-chave: parceria público- privada; negociação; interesse