Power failures: why the power industry has public responsibilities to think outside the box

Summary form only given. This paper argues that the power industry has public responsibilities not just to provide safe electricity at the lowest cost to consumers, but also to think critically about its own role in society and the environment. The argument takes place in three parts. 1) A brief social history of the development of the power industry. This is very schematic, but helps to provide a social and historical setting for other questions. 2) It considers the idea of public responsibility, and its role in engineering ethics in general. This is designed to provide a more philosophical context for the specific argument being made, and 3) it makes the argument itself, which can be summarized as follows: The power industry arose out of a particular vision of public responsibility. It has a proud history of meeting such responsibilities.