No informed analyst, however, would argue that the elimination of energy waste, no matter how essential, is the sole answer to the U.S. energy problem. The demand for new supplies will continue to grow through the rest of this century, if only to develop replacements for the petroleum and natural gas that still account for almost 72% of the nation's energy consumption (42). In addition to continued nuclear and coal development, to enhanced oil recovery techniques and synthetic fuels, there is growing interest in the potential contribution of smaller-scale technologies that are designed to harness the renewable energies of the sun. They come in a wide variety of forms. Passive solar design features that make sophisticated use of natural solar flows add little to initial construction costs and have been shown to save substantial amounts of fuel over the lifetime of a building. Solar space and water heating systems are already economically competitive with electrical heating in many places, though initial equipment costs are high and conventional backup systems remain necessary. Biofuels are also coming into increased use through such well-known processes as the burning of wood and wood wastes, the anaerobic conversion of urban garbage, animal wastes, algae or ocean kelp into methane, and the distillation of alcohol from “energy crops” such as sugar cane, manioc, cassava or com. New sources of electricity are becoming available from wind generators based on space-age technologies, from additional generating facilities installed at hydroelectric dams, from the temperature differences in ocean water, from geothermal and tidal power, from solar thermal power tower systems, from the growing use of cogeneration units and from the direct electrical conversion of sunlight via photovoltaic solar cells (see 36, 41, 57, 63, 64, 65, 66). Here, too, institutional barriers are slowing the development of these “unconventional” techniques. The reliance on high-technology, centralized systems of energy supply is well established in the almost exclusive control of utility companies over the production and sale of electrical power. Recent years, however, have witnessed the emergence of small entrepreneurial energy companies that are generating electricity from renewable sources such as wind and small-scale hydroelectric, as well as from cogeneration systems. Under the provisions of the 1978 Public Utility Regulation Policies Act, utilities are obliged to purchase at premium rates the surplus power these companies produce (67). Utilities and their regulatory commissions are thereby forced to calculate the marginal costs of generating new electricity and to examine the increasingly favorable economics of decentralized power production. In a period when the growth in U.S. electricity demand remains significantly below projections and utility companies face increasingly serious financial problems generated by overbuilding and excess capacity (68, 69, 70), the advantages of smaller power plants, producing energy from more diverse and decentralized sources, are becoming evident. The majority of Americans, at any rate, are convinced that these small-scale systems are the key to the nation's energy future: —Harris (71) reports that in December 1979, almost 70% of the public believed that solar energy will be making “a major contribution” to meeting U.S. energy needs within the next 15 to 20 years; only 3% expected it to be making “hardly any contribution at all.” —A Gallup poll of homeowners conducted in November 1980 confirmed the overwhelmingly greater preference of Americans for the development of solar energy systems as the way “to meet our future energy needs” (72). Such attitudes derive at least in part from the pervasive distrust of central gov-
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