Strategic R&D as an answer to the oil crisis. West and east German investment in coal refinement and the chemical industries, 1970–1990

In reaction to the oil‐price shocks of 1973/4 and 1978/9 both of the German states reconsidered coal refinement as a technological answer to economic and political constraints. In the GDR the chemical industry in particular could not do without this technology, but the state did not undertake a major R&D programme, preferring rather to continue with existing plants and processes. The disastrous consequences of this policy were felt when the Soviet Union cut off oil supplies to the GDR in the early 1980s, so damaging irreversibly not only the chemical industry, but the entire East Germany economy too. In the FRG the chemical industry was an active interlocuter with the federal government but notwithstanding the offer of generous subsidies was always prudent about the need for a switch back to coal from oil, and believed that new R&D programmes in the coal refining area were not imperative given Western German leadership in the field. In the event it was sectors of the economy other than the chemical industry which benefitted from the federal government's concerns about the oil price rises in the 1970s

Chemical industry · Coal · Economic policy · Economics · Economy · Energy policy · German · Market economy · Petroleum industry · Political science · Politics · Renewable energy · Subsidy · Engineering · European history and politics · Law

• The oil spillover

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• Scale and Scope

  Alfred D Chandler, Alfred D Chandler Jr et al.•Scale and Scope•1990

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