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Beltran Alain. Un réseau électrique régional ou national ?. In: Les Cahiers de l'Institut d'Histoire du Temps Présent, n°12, octobre 1989. Région parisienne, approches d’une notion 1860-1980. pp. 57-62.

Itinerary of an engineer. Pierre Massé before the Plan, André Bertran, Martine Bungener. Pierre Massé, polytechnicien, engineer to the corps of Ponts et Chaussées, had an exemplary career, from the Lozère, where he introduced tar, to a mission in the Rhineland, and to the office of General Commissioner for the Plan. It was mostly during his involvement with electricity that he implemented his economic and technical theories, and won a reputation as a modernizing expert, who stressed the essential roles of energy and energy policy. When in 1959 Pierre Massé stopped his activity in the electricity industry to become General Commissioner for the Plan, he confirmed his role as an economist to whom no area was alien., Beltran Alain, Bungener Martine. Itinéraire d'un ingénieur. In: Vingtième Siècle, revue d'histoire, n°15, juillet-septembre 1987. Dossier : Quatre visages d'une modernisation française. pp. 59-68.

Ernest Mercier est l’un des patrons les plus influents de l'entre-deux-guerres en France. Ses différentes activités industrielles l'ont conduit à siéger sur de vastes pans de l’économie française, notamment du secteur énergétique. La thèse retrace la carrière pétrolière d'un homme qui a joué un rôle central pour le développement d'une industrie devenue stratégique, mais qui est embryonnaire lorsqu'il rejoint ce secteur après la Première Guerre mondiale. Mercier assiste et assure la création d'une industrie pétrolière nationale. Les obstacles se font légion contre les ambitions pétrolières de la France. Elle se présente bien tard sur un marché étroitement contrôlé par de puissants trusts. La recherche et l'exploitation pétrolière demandent d'importantes ressources, et aucune société française n'a les moyens d'une politique indépendante. Certaines banques se lancent alors dans les affaires de pétrole en s'alliant aux grands trusts internationaux. C'est le cas de Paribas; la gestion de ses avoirs roumains représente la première expérience de Mercier dans ce secteur. L'État s'intéresse aussi au pétrole, il devient un acteur incontournable. Le gouvernement français n'a pourtant pas les moyens de ses ambitions dans le domaine pétrolier. La politique nationale mise en place durant l'entre-deux-guerres doit faire appel à l'épargne privée française. La création d'une compagnie nationale, la Compagnie française des pétroles, en 1924 regroupe ainsi les différentes banques et sociétés intéressées au pétrole. Mercier est personnellement choisi par le président Raymond Poincaré pour mener à bien cette mission. Cette carrière s'articule donc autour d'un fragile équilibre entre milieux privés et gouvernement. Mercier devient rapidement l'intermédiaire incontournable qui régit ces relations. La thèse s'appuie sur les archives bancaires et industrielles, mais aussi sur celles du gouvernement français et de ses différents ministères. Cette analyse de la carrière d'Ernest Mercier permet de retracer les origines du secteur pétrolier français et l'action déterminante d'un homme. Elle expose les mécanismes d'influence d'une puissante banque d'affaires et les conflits d'intérêts qu'engendre l'exploitation pétrolière., Ernest Mercier is one of the most influential business managers in interwar France. His different industrial activities led him to oversee large areas of the French economy, notably in the energy sector. This thesis examines the career in oil of the man who played a central role in the development of an industry that became strategic but was still nascent when he joined this sector after First World War. Mercier assisted and oversaw the creation of a national oil industry. The obstacles in the path of France's oil ambitions were legion. The country was a latecomer on a market that was largely controlled by powerful foreign trusts. The search for oil and its exploitation require important resources which no single French company possessed on its own. Certain banks thus decided to approach oil business by allying themselves with the different international trusts. This was the case for the French bank Paribas, whose Romanian holdings Mercier managed. In this context, state intervention became necessary, although the government did not have the means to achieve the full scope of its ambitions in the oil sector. The national oil policy formulated during the interwar period had to involve French private interests. The creation of a national oil company, the Compagnie française des pétroles, involved several banks and industrial companies interested in oil. Mercier was personally chosen by French president Raymond Poincaré to take up this task. His career revolved around a fragile equilibrium between private interests and state intervention. Mercier rapidly became the intermediary that managed these relations. The thesis makes use of banking and industrial archives but also of government records. This analysis of Ernest Mercier's career enables us to review the origins of the French oil sector and the determining role of one man. It exposes the influence mechanism of a powerful French business bank and the conflicts of interest that oil exploitation engenders.

When the first oil crisis hit Japan in 1973, the country was highly dependent on imported oil as the source of electric power. The dire prospect of an oil cut-off gave sufficient and immediate impetus for Japan to begin searching frantically for alternative energy sources. Starting in 1974, the state-sponsored Sunshine Project, which originated from concern about the country’s excessive oil dependency – rather than being a direct response to the oil crisis – mobilised the technological and financial resources for finding viable energy alternatives and implemented a number of state-funded projects. One of the most successful enterprises was the development of solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation, and, as a consequence, the household solar PV panel penetrated into the consumer market in the 1990s, comparatively earlier than most of the developed nations. The existing literature tends to focus on the economic incentive provided by state subsidy. However, the diffusion of the solar panel in Japan calls for a more nuanced explanation. A certain degree of social acceptance was needed before a large number of consumers embraced a new energy technology to the extent that they were willing to pay for the initial cost. The social acceptance for using a new technology was, in turn, based on pre-existing knowledge about the technology. This paper aims at shedding light on the pathways through which the knowledge about solar energy proliferated in the Japanese society, by focusing on solar energy demonstration and exhibitions – these forms of knowledge circulation had their roots in the penetration of the solar water heater in rural areas of Japan in the immediate post-WWII period.

International audience

International audience