In 1963 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, 1949) commissioned a temporary working group of experts to study electricity production and distribution of electricity in wartime situations. The working group consisted of internationally distinguished electricity experts, including former TECAID-ers R. Marin (Italy) and G. Bardon (France), as well as founding members of the UCPTE W. Fleischer (FRG) and chairman J.C, van Staveren (Netherlands). After meeting five times between 1963 and 1964, the group drew two conclusions. First, they insisted they should rely upon existing forms of collaboration, and did not regard a “supranational coordinating body” as useful. Second, the group's final report concluded that there was one matter “of fundamental importance for the use of electrical power in wartime: interconnections”. Overall, it advised that the number of interconnections should increase, both at high and low voltages.

Existing cooperation and networks thus not only served economic interests and the pursuit of a “happy and peaceful future”, they were also meant to face the threat of a new conflict during the Cold War. This gave a powerful strategic and ideological twist to the potential advantages of an international interconnected network. Historian Michael Hogan has claimed that integration “was the interlocking concept in the American plan for Western Europe, the key to a large single market, a workable balance of power among the Western states, and a favorable correlation of forces on the Continent”. Although the aim of security and political stability gained prominence in the 1950s, the ERP had already endeavored in that direction. These ideals fitted with another part of U.S. strategy – that of containment– which sought to halt the spread of oppressive communist regimes. Several examples show how this was already the case with the ERP. Western European economic strength was, according to U.S. policymakers, intertwined with defensive strength and the construction and expansion of electricity networks was seen as an integral part of that strength. But internal development in Western European was not all that mattered. NATO strategy also aimed to deny electrical equipment to the Eastern block, as well as to prevent close relations between East and West in the field of electricity.

In April, 1949, a group of European engineers was welcomed by their American hosts, and presented to the press at a location not far from the White House in Washington D.C. The conference they attended there kicked off a five-week tour of power plants and control centers around the United States. The visitors from Europe, most of them system operators in their respective countries, flew across the Atlantic to see firsthand the American state-of-the-art in the electricity industry. This Technical Assistance (TECAID) Mission was an integral element of the electricity programs set up within the framework of the European Recovery Program (ERP), also known as the Marshall Plan. The overall intention of the ERP with regard to electricity was to expand generation capacity, by building national and international power plants on the one hand, and making better use of new and existing capacity by creating European power pools on the other. These power pools, should be brought about by building both physical and institutional interconnections between countries.

To Paul G. Hoffman, administrator of the ERP, the mission was about more than increasing the amount of electricity available in Europe. In his address to the European engineers, Hoffman named two other important aspects of the TECAID Mission, which also applied to the ERP general. First, increasing the availability of electricity should help increase productivity in industry. Hoffman linked productivity to welfare, stating that it was “impossible for any people to enjoy a better standard of living unless within the confines of that country the people produce more”. At the same time, expanding generation capacity was directly related to economic recovery. The ERP's most prominent advisor on electric power, Walker Cisler, considered electricity to be “one of the greatest resources for the revival of Western Europe”.

The adjective “Western” reflected the absence of Central and Eastern European countries in the ERP. What is less obvious in Cisler's mention of “Western Europe” is that, Scandinavian engineers also did not come to Washington as part of the TECAID mission. In this, the meeting was a harbinger of how Europe would eventually be organized electrically.

Gales blazed across the Alpine region as usual during autumn. In the early morning of September 28, 2003 a severe storm forced a tree to sway near the Italian-Swiss border. Unfortunately, the branches tripped a power line. The load of the disturbed line is automatically divided among other cables. These transmission lines were already utilized close to their full capacity. To relieve them from excessive load, the Italian transmission network operator (TSO) decided to cut down electricity imports by 300 MW. Twenty-four minutes later another tree hit a high voltage line. This second incident overloaded remaining transmission lines between Italy and Switzerland. In order to contain the problem, Italy was isolated from the European grid of the Union for Coordination of Transportation of Electricity (UCTE) – encompassing the cooperation between 23 European TSOs.

This separation from the UCTE network caused a frequency instability in Italy, which eventually led to the collapse of the domestic system.1 Less than two minutes after Italy's isolation from the European interconnected network the entire Italian peninsula was deprived of electrical power. The largest blackout in Italian history was a fact. All over the country trains came to a halt and traffic lights went off. In Rome, where the annual all-night festival Notte Bianca was taking place, plunged into darkness. The Roman subway system came to halt, trapping thousands of passengers. The Vatican put backup generators into action, enabling the pope to proclaim new cardinals on early Sunday morning. An ongoing liver transplant had to be aborted and postponed in a Trieste hospital. Only after half a day the whole of Italy was once again supplied. The blackout not only disrupted Italian society, but also led to the death of at least four people.

The UCTE immediately appointed a committee to evaluate the blackout. Not awaiting the report, various actors began to search for the roots of the blackout, and initially pointed fingers at each other across the Alps. An Italian newspaper reported how Swiss and French authorities blamed Italy for not handling the crisis properly. In response, the Italian TSO claimed that their inability to restore control over the system was not the root of the blackout.

In 1932 the journal L’Européen featured a front-page article by Marcel Ulrich. Ulrich was laureate of the French Ecole de Polytechnique and Ecole des Mines de Paris. At the time he also was president of UNIPEDE. He earlier served as president with CIGRE. Ulrich thus was distinguished French engineer but also a wellknown figure within the international electro-technical community. His article certainly appealed to the latter community, as Ulrich described on-going discussions about a European electricity network. Engineers proposed such schemes starting in 1929, which received supported from the electro-technical community. About at the same time, the International Labor Organization and LoN took similar plans into consideration. Between 1930 and 1937, these Geneva organizations studied its feasibility. To engineers, a European interconnected network enabled a better economic mix by linking thermal and hydroelectric power plants.

As the idea of a European network was essentially a technological project, Ulrich's article seemed out of place in L’Européen. This journal provided a forum for different visions on European values and the future of Europe. With other journals like L’Europe, L’Europe nouvelle, Paneuropa, l’Européen was an outgrowth of the idea of European unity, which gained significant momentum and became a movement in the 1920s. To Europeanists – a loosely grouped elitist alliance of people promoting and believing in European unification – “Europe” seemed a way to overcome economic nationalism and political disagreement, and to restore Europe's pre-war global prestige. Ideas for unifying Europe often included technological projects as a unifying force. The European movement showed fascination with electricity, as well as with rational organization and technological solutions. It is therefore not surprising that Europeanists saw a European electricity network as a tool for forging European unity. Many Europeanists believed that such a network could increase material and social progress in Europe. Some even went further: they believed that interconnecting Europe's countries also encompassed a dimension that I would label an ideological mix. In their eyes, the immediate construction of a European high-voltage network could relieve unemployment, spark economic growth, modernize Central and Eastern European economies, and at the same time create a spiritual and unifying European bond.

The first two chapters of this book both opened by examining exceptional circumstances in Italy. In each case, Italy's electricity supply was under threat. International solutions were sought to overcome “local” problems in 1921 as well as in 2003. In the first case, collaboration with French and Swiss electricity producers ensured that Italy's North remained provided with sufficient electricity. Engineers seized upon the event to argue for more international cooperation, by building more international interconnections and liberalizing legislation in order to allow more cross-border electricity flows. Their rationale was that it would enable mutual assistance in cases like in 1921, which in turn would increase system reliability. It also opened perspectives for improving economic mix by interconnecting different types of plants.

An extensive interconnected network existed in 2003. In addition to national systems, a well-integrated European system had been developed. But the “goodwill” between countries, which was used to describe the spirit in 1921, seemed to have vanished. As transmission lines were damaged, neighboring countries decided to isolate Italy from the interconnected operation in order to prevent problems in their respective countries – rather than coming to Italy's aid. The result was the largest blackout in Italian history.

That loss of solidarity can be related to reforms initiated by the EU, whereby “goodwill” was replaced by competition. The European Commission sees a “truly competitive single European electricity network as the way to bring down prices, improve security of supply and boost competitiveness”. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), energy market liberalization has on the one hand led to reduced overcapacity, improved overall system efficiency, and often led to falling prices. On the other, however, IEA reckons that market reform “has fundamentally altered the underlying drivers for sound governance and weakened previous arrangements for maintaining effective transmission system security”. To strengthen these arrangements, ironically, the European Commission has proposed to develop a mechanism “to prepare for and ensure rapid solidarity and possible assistance to a country facing difficulties following damage to its essential infrastructure”.