ENERGY IN TRANSITION: A Report on Energy Policy and Future Options

This complex economic and sociological analysis of Sweden's energy future adds nothing new to the overall energy debate, and offers no new solutions for the United States to consider. Sweden's Secretariat for Future Studies tells us that the era of cheap oil and gas is over, and that these nonrenewable energy sources ""must first be supplemented and later wholly replaced,"" probably by coal and/or breeder reactors as the long-term solution. All national governments, they say, will be more involved in allocating these scarce resources, with energy becoming more bound up in foreign policy; and the Swedish government will have to encourage development of new forms of energy (especially solar) by means of regulations, tax incentives, etc. Economic progress need not be sacrificed to energy efficiency in the long run, the authors maintain, although short-term unemployment problems may result from efforts to curtail energy usage. While long-term programs are being developed, we must ""buy time"" through conservation plus limited use of gas, coal, and nuclear energy (although the authors feel Sweden could do without any new reactors until the 1990s through increased use of cogeneration, hydropower, and conservation, plus decreased electric space-heating). A familiar story, more complicated in approach than the Harvard Business School's Energy Future, and of primary interest to specialists.