Before 1973, with cheap abundant oil, little need existed for energy sector planning, although subsectors-e.g. electricity, gas, coal-often produced local, even national plans. Many countries use unplannable non-commercial energy more than commercial, leading to disastrous fuelwood over consumption and environmental problems. Assuming, with respect to the 1960s, relatively expensive energy in the 1990s, national energy planning becomes necessary, as no claim in the past that market forces will be sufficient has ever been substantiated. After sudden large oil price rises in the 1970s many countries found balancing energy inputs and outputs was difficult. Even in 1990 serious difficulties arose during the increases in energy sector or subsector efficiencies by pricing, energy management, investment in indigenous energy, to help economies to survive high energy costs, or to build up institutional and management capability to deal with energy sector and subsector shocks.

World economic and energy growth will make for urgent demands for environmental maintenance in the 1990s. While total energy consumed by industrialised countries will decline due to DM, greater energy efficiency and conservation, it will greatly increase in developing countries. The total per capita demand for industrial and commercial energy is still, in the developing world, less than one tenth of that of the developed world, yet their populations are exploding and will soon be ten times larger, requiring massive energy inputs just to survive let alone grow. Overall, therefore, substantial energy growth is likely in the twenty-first century if world economic growth is to be sustained, mainly on account of developing countries. What effect DM, improved efficiency and conservation will ultimately have, and whether it is possible politically and financially for developing country governments to press for this, is difficult to see at present. It is even more difficult to see whether such governments can afford to respond to environmental maintenance requests unless financially assisted specifically to do so. World Bank loans directly for environmental measures will not be anywhere near enough to completely address issues from all energy projects, and, in any case, all such loans for environmental maintenance have to be serviced and ultimately paid back. Also, environmental maintenance itself tends to increase total energy because factors such as reduction in acid rain, CO₂ emissions, etc., decrease energy conversion efficiency, thus requiring more fuel. On the other hand, most simplistic approaches (e.g. predicting exponential world populations and energy growth) leave out self-correcting factors such as energy conservation, improved technology transfer, greater fuel substitution, economies of scale, and greater insistence on environmental maintenance from dedicated suppliers of finance and equipment.

In many respects dynamic, spot and real-time pricings are an extension of demand management and time-of-use tariffs into actual time, i.e. rather than a time prescribed in the future from LMC. Dynamic or spot pricing uses actual short-run marginal costs (SMC) at any instant, plus a quality of supply premium to balance supply-demand. It is likely to be extended considerably in the 1990s increasing into most commercial and industrial tariffs, with residences gradually following suit. Short-run dispatching factors, generator competition and dynamic spot pricing will help maximise outputs from cogeneration, autogeneration and renewables. The emphasis in the 1990s towards private ownership and funding, demand management, improved efficiency, conservation, short-term finance rather than long-term economics, competition, deregulation, market makers, buying electricity forward, futures electricity markets, etc., all emphasise the short-term at the expense of the long-term, thus favouring dynamic and spot pricing, because it is based on conditions at the time of electricity usage, rather than pricing prescribed from a long-term development programme, and specified well before consumption. Many institutional electricity factors need little modification for dynamic pricing to work whilst others need considerable changes: using the regulated grid as the market maker, rather than the central dispatcher; encouragement of agents or brokers to assist generator, grid, distributor utilities, and consumers to carry out their short and long-term planning, investment and operation; development of a new information system to replace merit order generation schedules; removal of statutory obligations to supply; changed role of government or heavy deregulation towards light regulation or deregulation.

There is acceptance in the 1990s that developing countries cannot be treated by developed countries merely as juniors for the more advanced, or as primitives for the less developed. This in the past led to wrong approaches on the energy and electricity issues of: technology transfer; demand management; reliability standards; quality of supply; utility ownership and funding; regulation; invest ment programmes; and pricing. It has always been recognised that develop ment needs energy, usually assuming more energy is needed per unit of development for developing countries compared with industrialised countries. In this matter something can be learned from studying the industrial histories of developed countries, especially the part played by energy. During the twentieth century electricity has obviously made an impression on development, and it will play an even larger role in the 1990s and beyond, although the sector, even in developing countries, must take account of recent changes in emphasis with respect to: demand management; increasing efficiency; conservation; environ mental maintenance; private ownership and funding; competition; deregula tion; time-of-use and dynamic pricing; consumer preference and reaction; short term financial optimisation rather than long-term economic. There are special roles for government in developing countries under these changes.