Energy Use The Human Dimension (1984) / Chapter Skim
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2: Thinking About Energy
2: Thinking About Energy
Pages 14-31
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From page 14... ...
This chapter illustrates one fundamental way thinking about energy has been limited and shows how that limited thinking has shaped policy debates, excluding some plausible policy alternatives from serious consideration. FOUR VIEWS OF ENERGY Physicists have a clear definition of energy: it is a property of heat, motion, and electrical potential, and is measurable in joules, British thermal units, and their equivalents.
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From page 15... ...
The energy of political debates -- of "energy and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution.
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From page 16... ...
Four views of energy THINKING ABOUT ENERGY View of energy Important properties of energy Central values emphasized Interests emphasized Commodity Supply Choice for present buyers Energy producers Demand and sellers Consumers with sufficient Price resources Ecological resource Depletability Sustainability Bystanders to market Environmental impact Frugality transactions Effect on other resources Choice for future citizens Future generations Social necessity Availability to meet essential Equity Poor people needs (distribution) Poorly funded public services Strategic material Geopolitical location National military and U.S.
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From page 17... ...
The ecological resource view emphasizes certain properties of energy. Energy sources are classified as renewable or nonrenewable, exhaustible or inexhaustible, polluting or nonpolluting.
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From page 18... ...
Because high levels of energy use may irreversibly alter major environmental systems, such as climate, the resource view emphasizes frugal energy use.3 Since the western industrial world is particularly dependent on nonrenewable energy resources (oil, coal, natural gas, and uranium) , the ecological resource view puts special emphasis on careful use of those energy sources.
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From page 19... ...
But salient or not, real and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution.
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From page 20... ...
In this view of energy, strategic needs take priority over all others, and any debate about how to treat other demands on energy sources and federal funds must take place after those needs are met. Conflict about Views of Energy The most heated debates about specific energy issues are also conflicts about the nature of energy.4 The intensity and persistence of energy conflicts reflect the fact that more is at stake than the specifics of any particular policy.
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From page 21... ...
Only since the early 1970s, when this situation changed, did spirited public debate arise. The environmental movement and the "limits-to-growth" argument focused attention on ecological resource issues, and the temporary oil shortage of 1973–1974 was seen as evidence of resource depletion.
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From page 22... ...
National policy makers came to see oil vulnerability as the preeminent and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution.
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From page 23... ...
: "We are putting behind an era of stop-and-go policymaking." and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution.
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From page 24... ...
The advocates of energy conservation have found a way to get ecological resource issues considered, but not on their own terms. The commodity view of energy dominates the resource and necessity views in the sense that environmental, equity, and related concerns must be asserted as reactions to policy initiatives that usually derive from the commodity view.
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From page 25... ...
A view may be promoted in the media when an advocate appears on television saying that energy efficiency can help cut air pollution (ecological resource view) or that the country might be held hostage by Arab sheiks (strategic view)
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From page 26... ...
All of the above factors have helped the commodity view of energy remain dominant in the face of challenges from the necessity and resource views. Thus, energy policy alternatives presented for public debate continue to be based primarily on a commodity view, with allowances for exceptional treatment when extreme inequity can be demonstrated or when political pressure for exceptions becomes intense.
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From page 27... ...
More prominent in political debates have been attempts to exert limited public control over energy corporations: by taxing windfall profits from oil deregulation or by requiring utilities to offer energy audits and to purchase power from some small producers at favorable rates. We do not analyze the arguments for and against public control of energy, but we do find it significant that this obvious way of bringing controversial energy decisions into the political arena has not been taken seriously in recent years.
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From page 28... ...
But from the perspective of meeting energy needs, energy assistance programs are far from the best way to spend government money. Direct investments in weatherizing buildings or in improving the efficiency of furnaces are more cost effective and can meet the needs of energy users more completely and for a longer period of time.8 Second, the dominance of the commodity view helps create a familiar pattern of conflict in energy policy.
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From page 29... ...
3. In this view, the goal of energy policy can be described as finding ways to accomplish the things energy does for people while putting less strain on ecological systems.
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From page 30... ...
For many people with an ecological resource view, it also means minimizing total energy use; a choice of inexhaustible energy sources over depletable energy sources; and, among inexhaustible sources, a preference for rechanneling ongoing energy flows, for example, sunlight, over developing new inexhaustible sources with major foreseeable and negative environmental impacts, for example, the breeder reactor.
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From page 31... ...
Just as the political dominance of the commodity view puts a burden of proof on those who assert claims based on environmental preservation or social equity, the central place of the commodity view in economic and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution.
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