Energy : demand, conservation, and institutional problems

Over the past several years, the issues of energy demand and energy use have increasingly become the concerns of the research community. A significant number of scientists and technologists, as well as specialists in the economic and social disciplines, have responded to the critical need to resolve these issues, which are only now seriously activating decision makers in government and in the private sector and engaging the attention of consumers. In fact, the study of energy problems is rapidly gaining the status of a formally recognized subject area, supported by a sizable body of published research. This book makes a solid contribution to the foundation of this new subject area.The book is based on a conference held at MIT in February 1973. It includes in their entirety four important invited papers--"Ways of Looking at Future Economic Growth, Resource and Energy Use," by Tjalling C. Koopmans; "Theory and Practice of Effluent Control," by Robert Dorfman; "Institutional Capacity to Implement Energy Conversion Proposals," by Edward Berlin; and "The Entropy Crisis," by George N. Hatsopoulos--and a number of contributed papers that were presented at the conference by authorities from across the country and from abroad.The editor has organized the papers into a number of groups that represent major study areas and topics of general concern: economic growth and energy resources, the modeling of the energy system, input-output methodologies applied to energy studies, studies of electrical demand, energy in transportation, the transportation of energy, energy conservation, energy supply, problems of gas regulation, solar energy, and institutional problems.The conference was organized by MIT's Energy Laboratory under a grant from the RANN program of the National Science Foundation.