Book reviews

assume that problems of safety and security will be solved in the fullness of time, will argue that the switch to nuclear electricity generation repre- sents the easier pattern of evolution. This is because the existing centra- tised electricity production with its high voltage distribution/transporta- tion systems can not only be utlised in the change-over to nuclear elec- tricity, but can also be used as the base from which extensions and intensification can take place. These reasons provide the clue to why most of the world's electricity authorities are so much in favour of nuclear power: its development can be integrated so easily into their existing organisa t ional , ins t i tu t ional , economic and technical structures. It also enables them to keep control over the energy system of a country or a region, with consequential political, as well as economic and social, implications.

On the other hand, the opponents of nuclear power can take new h e a r t - providing they recognise the immensity and the nature of the task before them. They may use the knowledge that the world's resources of the preferred fossil fuels - oil and natural gas - are indeed sufficient to energise the world for the foreseeable future at a fraction of the investment cost involved in the nuclear option if, at the same time, they are prepared to advocate and to support the idea of quite fundamental changes in the electricity supply systems and in the electricity authorities as a necessary accompaniment to their efforts. Indeed such an understanding of the issues really involved in the 'great energy debate' for the 1970s would get the anti- or the minimum-nuclear lobbies well away from the criticism often levelled at them, ie that their stand is only sustainable on the basis of a zero-growth economy. This is not the necessary alternative to advocating the nuclear electrification of society, already under way in the USA, planned for Sweden and France, and tentatively adopted as the strategy by the European Com- munity's energy planners.

The required evaluation of a more efficient use of conventional energy

and the subsequent actions required to implement the changes in the energy economy (and in society)can take the world through to a period when ongoing research on more exotic alternatives- solar power or fusion p o w e r - will bring 21st century results which finally make the current debate over nuclear power versus oil and gas obsolete. It may also bring us to what seems likely to be the next great energy controversy -whe the r to go for the newly-researched infinite sources of sun or hydrogen energy or to concentrate on the effective recovery of energy from the massive accumu- lations of coal, shales and tar sands which will remain largely untouched over the next 30-50 years, given acceptance of one or other of the alternative strategies for the period discussed in this review.

Professor Peter R. Odoll, Institute of Economic Geography,

Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

L'ENERGIE ET LE DESARROI POST-INDUSTRIEL- ESSAI SUR LA CROISSANCE DE L'ENERGIE (Energy and post-industrial disorder

- an essay on the growth of energy)

by Louis Puiseux

Collection Futuribles, Hachette Lit- terature, Paris 1973 (in French) 188pp.

Louis Puiseux's ideas are of the kind which disturb, sometimes irritate, but never leave the reader indifferent because they are intellectually stimu- lating and demand continuous atten- tion. Instead of adopting a dogmatic attitude, the author has in fact based his analysis on two different stand- points: that of the engineer of Elec- tricit6 de France (EDF), responsible for a team whose work involves predicting energy consumption, and that of the citizen who cannot simply remain an observer of the problems of hi~ time; he is concerned about the future of our post-industrial societies whose wealth cannot be dissociated

from the poverty of the rest of the world. The author recognises 'the overlapping between the technocratic argument and the radical argument'; he notes 'the divorce between the producer, the citizen and the private individual' (p. 127). Rather than attempt to reconcile them, would it not be more worthwhile to elucidate some of the contradictions and try to account for them? An example is pro- vided further on, but first I intend to run through the main stages in Louis Puiseux's approach.

The problems raised by the risk of an energy shortage are both wide- spread and acute, in that they result primarily from the place of energy in industrialisation. This has emerged, indeed, from the 'domestication of energy, that is, from the encounter of scientific rationalism with English coal' (p. 14). If one accepts, with certain anthropological historians (Leroi-Gourhan) that industrialisation constitutes a mutation in the evolu- tion of the human species, one can appreciate that this is an irreversible trend and hence the impossibility of returning to a society which uses no form of energy other than muscular, animal force. Whether or not one admits the validity of the 'energology' of A. Varagnac (p. 109-116), it is indeed true that with the introduction of coal - steam - steam-engine, then o f electricity - computers - mass media, man has externalised one after the other his muscles, his nervous system, and his consciousness of time and space. Energy consumption has thus become an intrinsic variable of the evolving human species. But how can we cope with this growth in consumption?

With the end of oil in sight, it is only the rapid break-through of nuclear power on to the market that can provide a solution. Moreover, both industries have been interacting closely for at least ten years or so. On the one hand, the bright future prospects for nuclear power have been a factor in weakening the oil cartel and in leading to gradual surrender by the large oil companies of the income they had been seizing. On the other hand, the fall in oil prices has been acting as a brake on development of the nuclear

256 EN E R GY POL ICY September 1974

industry. The possibility of producing countries recovering this income, from 1970 onwards, will allow atomic energy to make great strides. From this point on, Louis Puiseux's analysis and that which has been the basis of EDF policy for several years hardly diverge at all. On the year 2000 horizon, there are no other possible solutions for Eastern Europe, without coal, shales or tar sands, since not one of these alternative potential sources, (hydraulic, tidal wind, geothermal, solar) can make much of a con- tribution to satisfying needs. The development of nuclear power, on the contrary, 'bears no risk of being impeded by growing scarcity of the raw materials it uses. Development is technically feasible, and owing to this, electricity must become, from now (November 1973) and at least until the end of the century, the most economical form of energy being developed' (p. 49). Satisfaction of energy needs is thus proceeding through 'All Nuclear-All Electric', especially on the huge market of thermal uses, up to now the game preserve of the oil industry. Such a choice does not involve wasting primary energy, as the calculations on pp. 53-55 are meant to prove: it eliminates certain types of pollution, but leaves a doubt in the air as to the very long-term risks (transuranic wastes and possible effects of such a legacy on our descendants).

It might appear that since we cannot do without industrialisation, the fact that we are obliged to accept such risks condemns the very methods which industrial growth itself has adopted. On this point the radical argument has some merit since it must be admitted that the growth of some countries has been achieved to the detriment of others (thanks, especially, to cheap energy and raw materials). Furthe rmore, the economic growth has not reduced the inequalities but rather made them worse, and hence it is responsible for demographic imbalances (famine is at the basis of overpopulation) and the trials of strength between rich and poor! If we are to proceed with irreversible industrialisation without endangering the human species, then

we must change the methods of growth, giving priority to all those choices which could contribute to reducing the inequalities. The con- sequences of this in the energy field are not insignificant and Louis Puiseux offers a preliminary sketch (p. 96-105).

Has this kind of radical argu- ment any chance of influencing the technocratic argument which governs us? Isn't the dichotomy even more profound than the author thinks? He, however, is familiar with the mysteries of dealing with important energy decisions. Let us take some of his conclusions which seem to us to be valid: 'withdraw management of the energy sector from private interests in order to entrust it to competent public bodies, both regional and worldwide' (p. 108); 'integrate public enterprises with planning that is genuinely democratic' (p. 121). But surely the public enterprise itself, responding to the imperatives of its own growth, rejects all 'genuinely democratic' control over its choices, and mobilises all its persuasive powers (not inconsiderable) to 'convince the Plan and the Public Powers' (p. 40) that its choices are the best ones for the collectivity. It is these same public enterprises, supported by the Public Powers, which constitute in France, as elsewhere, an enormous complex nuclear structure, which forges new inequalities between nations, and at the very heart of these nations, between the small group (Areopagus) of decision makers and the great mass of citizens !

Such are some of the thoughts stimulated by Louis Puiseux's book. In fact we have far from exhausted it since the technocractic argument that he shows us only constitutes the tip of the iceberg. The rest forms the subject of a second volume, modestly entitled 'methodological notes' which analyses rigorously the energy consumption forecasting methods used at EDF and the limits to their econometric sup- port. This study is sufficiently interesting to deserve independent treatment in a later issue.

J.M. Martin Institute of Energy Economics

(CNRS) Grenoble

Book reviews

ENERGY CONSERVATION: WAYS AND MEANS

edited by J.A. Over and A. C. Sjoerdsma

No 19 in the "Future Shape of Technology" series, published by the Future Shape of Technology Foundation, The Hague, The Netherlands, 1974, 208pp, Dfl 34

This publication presents the con- clusions of a study group under the auspices of the Dutch Foundation.* The study was carried out by leading experts in energy technology, economics and sociology. Each specialist discusses precise ways and means whereby the objectives of energy conservation can be met in the industrial, social and commercial conditions obtaining in the Nether- lands.

The facts, figures and most of the references relate specifically to the Netherlands, but the way in which these are used can provide guidelines for policy in other countries, given equally comprehensive national statistical information.

Starting with a world picture of demand and supply the Dutch patterns reveal a small yet significant number of energy-intensive industries and activities. Each one of these is reviewed both qualitatively and quantitatively in relation to its potential for energy conservation.

Two particularly illuminating points of reference throughout the studies are (a) to express the potential for energy saving as a percentage of Dutch national con- sumption as well as in common absolute units and (b) to indicate the factor increase in basic energy costs which would make economic the various technological alternatives already in existence but not yet prepared for introduction into society by normal 'free' market mechanisms.

*The Future Shape of Technology Foun- dation was established in 1968 by the Royal Institution of Engineers in the Netherlands to work in the public interest. It is financed by the state and by industry.

ENERGY POLICY September 1974 257