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As a result of the energy conversion and storage research underway at Oklahoma State University since 1961, several components needed to engineer a continuous-duty energy system operating on replenishable solar energy have been developed to the prototype stage and are being tested. This paper presents and discusses these components and how they fit together in the solar energy systems envisioned for the long-term and immediate future. A simplified economic analysis of solar energy systems is presented, and the calculated generation costs are compared with those of conventional fuel burning systems for different fuel costs, load factors and interest rates. One result of this study is that wind energy systems, costing $125 to $150 per installed kW and pumping power directly into a.c. mains for 20 per cent of the time using the field-modulated generating systems developed at OSU, are competitive with conventional systems costing $250 to $350 per installed kW operating at a load factor of 80 per cent and fuel cost of $0·50 per MBtu. More such comparisons are included in the text of the paper.

I have the challenging task of summing up in a notional twenty minutes this fascinating two day Discussion Meeting. First I will say something about the trends which have emerged from the papers and discussion. We began with the Secretary of State, who gave us a thoughtful paper showing a full recognition of the realities which constrain any power and energy policy. He told us that ‘ all energy predictions are wrong because of the great difficulty in predicting the demands and supplies’. He instanced this by saying that no one foresaw the North Sea development or the rapid progress with the breeder reactor, and went on to remind us that the balance between fuel sources may alter radically. So, from a policy-making angle we must have a flexible programme. He stressed the need to re-vitalize the coal industry, but warned us that new collieries take many years to bring in to production - as for instance, the 8-10 years for full production from the new Selby colliery. Turning to the problems of the nuclear power programme he suggested that we would be moving to a situation where development was more international than hitherto. Having begun with several nuclear consortia, we now had a single national design and construction firm with the resources needed for operating on a world scale.

ABSTRACT Investments in resource development by private enterprise will produce socially optimal results in only those instances where (1) monopoly power by private enterprise and unjustified interference with the market mechanism by government are absent, and (2) external (spillover) benefits and costs are absent. Government interference in order to raise the price of oil has caused a significant divergence between private and social benefits such that over-investment in oil exploration and development has resulted in serious resource misallocation. For marine minerals requiring major technological innovations in deep sea dredges as a prerequisite to development, the technological external benefits appear to be sufficiently large to constitute a primafacie case for a public subsidy. However, the amount of such a justified subsidy still does not appear sufficient to render deep sea manganese recovery profitable in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, there are external costs due to marine mineral recovery. These spillover costs are particularly evident in near-shore oil recovery. Efficient resource allocation within a free enterprise system requires that all externalities be internalized so that they enter into the profitability calculations of those economic units affecting the development of natural resources. INTRODUCTION Decentralized decision making is an identifying characteristic of a pure free enterprise economy. Decisions regarding which resources to develop, when, how, and by whom, are made by individual business units rather than by government. Planning is provided by a relatively free price system where business units are motivated by pursuit of private profit. This system can be shown, in terms of a theoretical model, to produce optimum resource allocation and efficiency where prices are determined by effective competition, and where there are no externalities. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of private enterprise decision making processes regarding marine resource development. The paper is divided into three parts. First, we will identify the private decision making process. Second, the important externalities problem will be defined and introduced as a distorting influence for private decision making. Third, the principal external costs and benefits of marine mineral recovery will be identified, and the concept and method of calculating a social rate of return will be set forth. PRIVATE DECISION MAKING IN RESOURCE DEVELOPENT The guiding motive for business in resource development, as in other areas, is pursuit of private profit. To the extent that the investment decision making process is rational, private rates of return for prospective investments are calculated. This involves estimation of required investments, estimation of the flow of gross revenues over time, and estimation of corresponding operating costs through the life of projects. This calculation is illustrated in Figure 1. In year 1 an investment outlay is shown without corresponding gross income. In year 2 relatively heavy investment and initial operating costs are shown corresponding with relatively low gross income. As income builds up in years 3 and 4, annual costs and revenues are reduced to a steady state condition showing annual revenues in excess of annual costs and a corresponding annual operating profit.

A frequently suggested strategy for alleviating transportation energy shortage is to reduce travel demands by altering the patterns of land uses in cities. This paper examines this strategy by exploring the interface between urban structure, transportation energy consumption, and transportation policy. The interrelationships between travel demand and urban form are first examined, and research attempts to clarify and model these relationships are reviewed. The role of transportation as a land use development control is discussed, and the use of “transportation performance standards” is proposed as a method for integrating transportation energy considerations into land development controls and decisions.

There can be little doubt that EEC has been beneficial to the industrial development of its founder members. The enormous increase in trade amongst the Six and with non-member countries has generated a favourable climate for investment which in turn has generated a more-than-average increase in industrial production and in the GNP. Up to now, serious difficulties have not been encountered and existing safeguard clauses have hardly ever been applied. In order to look at the practical impact of EEC for the industry of the new member states, the paper examines some of EEC's achievements particularly important for industry: commercial policy; association policy; free movement of labour; competition policy. For other Community policies only general guidelines have been decided and confirmed by the Paris Summit Conference of the Nine in October 1972. The most important blueprints actually under discussion concern Economic and Monetary Union, Regional Policy, Industrial Policy, Energy Policy. These policies are likely to have a more important impact on European industry than what EEC has done so far. They aim to constitute, by 1980, a zone, where persons, services and capital would move freely, but without distorting competition or creating regional imbalances and where enterprises could develop their activities on a Community scale. The new member states will fully participate in the definition of these policies.

This paper is concerned with Sector Policy and more specifically Energy Policy and Government Policy for public corporations.

The growing penury and rising cost of petroleum argue for making fuel conservation an integral element of our national energy policy. Opportunities for fuel savings are particularly promising in the automobile sector which is responsible for one third of national petroleum consumption. The paper examines five generic approaches to reducing automobile fuel consumption and considers their effectiveness and wider impact. The five approaches are: emergency measures involving restrictions on driving and control over the fuel supply; reduction of vehicle-miles travelled (VMT's) through diversion of commuters to mass transit and through promotion of higher vehicle occupancy rates; raising the fuel efficiency of automobile operation; improving the automobile's design fuel efficiency; and reducing travel requirements.

HE EVENTS of this last year have made consumers everywhere aware of the need for an adjustment in energy consumption patterns. In the 1960's the price of energy appears to have fallen in real terms and as a result the growth of most forms of energy consumption accelerated. Until recently most energy resources -excluding natural gas where the price was kept down by regulation-were in a buyers' market. The emphasis was on sales promotion. In electricity, for instance, utilities offered special incentives to increase usage, such as favorable offers on appliances or free light bulbs, while continuing to rely on their long-standing practice of lower average prices for large consumption. The gasoline market was also soft, as appears from such various types of marketing actions as games and free gifts to increase sales. Excess capacity in refining strengthened the hand of independent marketers, whose emergence often led to price wars. In buying new cars most consumers paid little attention to gasoline mileage. Today, however, the problem is not to increase energy sales but to decrease them. This has raised the question as to whether market mechanisms will be able to adjust supply and demand to each other. Already there are signs that the market may not be given a chance. Public opinion polls show that a majority of the public feel gasoline rationing is needed, and one city, Los Angeles, has ordered all households to reduce electricity consumption by 10 percent or have their power turned off. Clearly there is no widespread confidence in the efficacy of higher prices in curtailing demand, although the price increases themselves are criticized on distributional grounds. Greater knowledge of the effect of prices is needed not only for short-term domestic policy, but also for anticipating developments in the world petroleum market, where a producer cartel is now firmly in charge. In this paper we present results on the demand for gasoline and residential electricity, the two largest items in the consumer's energy budget. These demand functions are estimated using pooled time series data from different states. This disaggregated approach was selected because regional variations in prices and consumption patterns provide valuable information for disentangling the effects of price changes. The data are fitted to dynamic demand functions of the flow-adjustment type; this specification corrects for the lack of adequate data on changes in the characteristics of the capital stocks involved.

Historically, R & D efforts in the oligopolistic automotive industry have dealt mainly with seeking the changes in styling and other visible characteristics of automobiles which would appeal to the status-conscious American public. Recent fuel shortages coupled with the national desire to achieve certain environmental goals promise to change the character of automotive R & D, at least in the short term. The conclusions of this paper are that major emphasis will now be placed on (a) the development of improved lightweight vehicles and (b) the development of new propulsion technologies having desirable fuel consumption as well as pollutant emission characteristics.

India is today undergoing changes that call for long-term planning of her energy supplies. For this reason, the Energy Survey of India Committee was formed. The Committee has 0 presented to the Indian Government a comprehensive report that has dealt with the broad strategy for the development of energy resources and energy supply industries. This paper summarizes the findings of the Committee.

The paper includes an overall assessment of the nuclear debate, together with discussions of power generation safety, power alternatives and fuel supplies, environmental impacts, economic analysis, and power plant reliability.

Five papers dealing with computer modeling applications are included separately in the database. (PCS)

This paper is addressed to the selection of an optimal mix of electricity generating plants. The focus is on the problem of uncertainty with respect to the date of availability of breeder nuclear reactors. Sequential probabilistic linear programming is employed. This makes it possible to optimize the mix of fossil, nuclear, and peaking plants to be installed during the 1980's -- assuming that breeder technology will become available at some randomly determined later date. The model allows for the effects of exhausting our reserves of uranium ore. The exhaustion of these resources does not lead to disaster in the 21st century for an economy or a world with a backstop technology such as coal-fired electricity plants. There seems to be a low value of information on the breeder availability date, for the initial policy is rather insensitive to this date. This conclusion holds not only when future demands are taken as fixed parameters, but also when they are dependent upon the price of electricity. On environmental grounds (climate changes radioactivity hazards, air and water pollution), there may be good reasons to slow the rate of growth of electricity demand. These are quite different issues than exhausting the resources of low-cost uranium ore. If our numerical assumptions are correct, it is not optimal to slow down the electricity growth rate up to 1990 just because of possible delays in the arrival of the breeder and hence a rapid rise in the price of uranium. For the year 2000, the decision on demands can be deferred until the time arrives to make capital investment decisions for the decade following 1990. By that point, some of the breeder's uncertainties will have been resolved.

This paper presents a new approach to the quantitative analysis of U.S. energy policy, based on an integration of econometric modeling and input-output analysis. It incorporates a new methodology for assessing the impact of economic policy on both demand and supply for energy within a complete econometric model of the U.S. economy. The model consists of production models for nine industrial sectors, a model of consumer demand, and a macro-econometric growth model for the U.S. economy. The model is first used to project economic activity and energy utilization for the period 1975 to 2000 under the assumption of no change in energy policy. The model is then employed to design a tax program for stimulating energy conservation and reducing dependence on imported sources of energy. The overall conclusion of the analysis of tax policy is that substantial reductions in energy use can be achieved without economic cost.