- Email: [email protected]
Energy today and tomorrow: Living with uncertainty
448
Books
The good and the bad in energy prospecting Peter
Ode11
Energy Today and Tomorrow: Living With Uncertainty J. Darmstadter, H. Landsberg and H. Morton xv + 233 pages (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall, 1983) Energy 2000-2020: World Prospects and Regional Stresses World Energy Conference Conservation Commission lxviii + 259 pages (London, Graham and Trotman, 1983) These two books on the future of energy offer stark contrasts in background, content and conclusions. approach, Energ Today and Tomorrow is a book from Resources for the Future, an independent research institution in Washington, with a longer history than most in its concern both for resources development and exploitation, and for their availability and use in the future. The joint authors each have a long and distinguished track record in energy analysis and evaluation so that the content of this relatively short book is distilled out of a wealth of experience and work in the field. shine These attributes through throughout the volume with its systematic and integrated economics-orientated coverage of the essential issues. Each of these-viz how do we use energy?; energy resources; research and development; widening the energy horizon; competition and regulation in energy markets; energy and the environment; and energy in an unstable worldis considered in a separate chapter. In addition, a preliminary discussion of the major themes of the energy problem (in a Peter R. Ode11 is Director, Centre national Energy Studies, Erasmus 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
for InterUniversity,
25 page introduction which ought to be required reading for all analysts, commentators and policy makers in the energy field), a 15 page epilogue (entitled “Living with some Chronic Issues”), and ‘insets’, in heavy typed pages, throughout the book which describe particularly important topics (eg “The Requisites for Recoverable Petroleum to exist in a Sedimentary Basin”, “Finite and Renewable page 62, Resources”, page 80, “How Reactors are Fueled”, page 111, “The Significance of Capital Intensity”, page 116, “Public Opinion and the Environment”, page 176) ensure that the reader is not only put in the right frame of mind for his/her attention to the subject, but also constantly reminded of the essential issues. The book (and not least its title) is deliberately-and successfully-populist, but, in spite of this, it avoids being patronizing. There is a wealth of information for readers who lack the specialized knowledge of energy production, use and economics, but detail for its own sake is always avoided. The information is, instead, used to illustrate and to demonstrate the wealth of ideas with which the authors are concerned. Of these, perhaps, the most important and the most recurrent in the book is the idea of choice in decisions on energy production and use in the modern, energy-intensive world, with both shortterm and longer-term costs and benefits having to be evaluated when making a choice for one particular decision, rather than for a number of alternatives. The authors clearly hold the view that the future of energy is an issue which is susceptible to rational analysis and to wise (rather than unwise) decisions: they also recognize, however, the propensity to irrationality in analysis and decision-
FUTURES August 1994
Boats
taking and, they do indeed see this as the most virulent element in the ‘uncertainty’ which the energy-future presents. Optimistically, one hopes that a book such as this could help to reduce irrationality in respect of energy decisions. This may well be the case for the USA, given the status of the Resources for the Future there as an institution, and the way in which the book’s presentation and organization, as well as its content, is structured to its use as an educational tool. A draft of the book was ‘customer tested’ through a group of students in a Science Technology and Public Policy Programme in a mid-West college and the authors say they responded to comment and criticism in the published version. Unhappily, this ‘US-customer tested product’ is not as useful for the wider world. Too much of the content is too specifically American and the book devotes too little attention to the international aspects of the energy problem. There is, of course, a discussion (albeit brief) on resources’ availability worldwide, and international energy institutions such as OPEC and the multinational oil corporations, but there are but passing references to energy supply/ demand issues in the rest of the industrialized world; and virtually nothing on the issues in respect of the centrally planned economies and the third world. These omissions could, relatively easily, be made good (and some of the detail on the USA-such as internal regulation of the oil and gas industries-omitted) and so make the book an even more important tool for heightening understanding of energy prospects at the global level. Global
issues
Energy2000-2020:World Pmspects and Regional Stressesis, on the other hand, as the title itself clearly indicates, concerned with global issues: disappointingly, however, the book is almost entirely unsuccessful in its presentation and analysis of the issues. Indeed, this book has a high
FUTURES August 1984
449
probability of ‘turning off’ even the most avid student of international energy questions. The reasons for this lie in the manner whereby the publication has emerged. The World Energy Conference (WEC)-an assemblage largely of vested interests in energy productionmeets every four years and its so-called Conservation Commission must, like all the other commissions of the conference, produce one or more documents for discussion at each meeting. This is the Conservation Commission’s publication for the September 1983 international gathering in New Delhi. Moreover, being an international organization working on the basis of representation by nation states, the WEC is also required in all its efforts to ensure that each Commission is representative of all global factions, so further ensuring that conclusions on serious issues are essentially lowest-commondenominator stuff-as is the case with this particular publication. Add to these near-insuperable handicaps to the production of a reasoned and consistent document the fact that the committee responsible for Energy 2000-2020 was enthusiastically committed by the predilection of its chairman and report COordinator, Dr J.-R. Frisch, to a massive number-crunching exercise as a means of achieving results on the future evolution of energy production and use, then there is a near-loo% certainty for an unreadable and unbelievable document. Some 40 ‘$5 of the pages (of the 259 in the main part of the book) are devoted to tables and lists of various kinds, while in the remaining pages a line of text without one or more statistics is rare. The poverty of the scientific background to all this conspicuous effort of counting and calculation is revealed in two ways. First, in Annex 24, the bibliography: apart from references to other WEC publications, to statistical yearbooks and the like, and to other similar number-crunching exercises at the global and national levels, there are but a handful of entries concerned with the
450
Books
analysis of issues in energy economics, technological research and development, resources’ availability, geopolitics of energy and demand, and supply environmental questions: the major elements picked out in the Resources for the Future book as the determinants of the energy outlook. Second, the methodology whereby the conclusions of the book are reached is set out in a single chapter of only nine pages, half of which are devoted to simple ‘where’ and ‘when’ questions. Nowhere in the book, the aim of which is to give a range of energy supply/demand forecasts by world region for the years 2000 and 2020, is there any explicit presentation of, for example, the assumptions on the price elasticity of supply-or demandfor different periods and different regions. Nor are the assumptions on the energy intensity of economic growth revealed, although, it is very generally agreed, these are absolutely fundamental as a basis for the kind of long-range forecasting with which the book claims to be centrally concerned. Regretfully, therefore, in spite of the
effort that has clearly been put into the calculations involved and in the presentation of the results, this book can be safely added to the many others of the last 10 years which in essence have had nothing rational to say about the world’s energy future. In spite of the daily prayers offered by the editor and the regular retreats he undertook to religious institutions (page xiv) as a means of achieving a successful conclusion for the project, the book makes no contribution to a more effective understanding of the energy problem and it cannot, therefore, make any contribution in the search for solutions. Its utility is thus in stark contrast with that of Energy: Today and Tomorrow.
Unhappily, in as far as the World Energy Conference has a much wider ‘contact system’ and far superior public relations than Resources for the Future, the use of the two books as backgrounds to, and/or justification for, energy policy decision taking seems likely to be close to the reciprocal of the scientific and intellectual content of the books they have sponsored.
A thought revolved Chris
Crickmay
Essays in Design J. Christopher Jones xiii + 335 pages, X9.95 John Wiley, 1984)
(Chichester,
UK,
Chris Jones may already be known to the reader for his papers at conferences on the future and his articles on futures topics. But he is perhaps best known for his book, Design Methods,’ which has become a standard text, translated into several languages and essential reading for anyone interested in design, or socioChris Crickmay is head of Art and Design at Dartington College of Arts, Totnes, Devon, UK.
technical change. It remains one of the few books to have tackled the shift in the scale of modern design problems from products to whole systems. It is still one of the best guides to the design process and the use of practical imagination in any field, dealing particularly with predesign investigation, or ‘thinking before drawing’. It is 14 years since the publication of Design Methods, and all the more interesting therefore to discover how the author’s views have developed. His new book, Essays in Design, published this year, looks at first sight like a radical if not a reversal of views. departure,
FUTURES August 1994
Books
The good and the bad in energy prospecting Peter
Ode11
Energy Today and Tomorrow: Living With Uncertainty J. Darmstadter, H. Landsberg and H. Morton xv + 233 pages (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall, 1983) Energy 2000-2020: World Prospects and Regional Stresses World Energy Conference Conservation Commission lxviii + 259 pages (London, Graham and Trotman, 1983) These two books on the future of energy offer stark contrasts in background, content and conclusions. approach, Energ Today and Tomorrow is a book from Resources for the Future, an independent research institution in Washington, with a longer history than most in its concern both for resources development and exploitation, and for their availability and use in the future. The joint authors each have a long and distinguished track record in energy analysis and evaluation so that the content of this relatively short book is distilled out of a wealth of experience and work in the field. shine These attributes through throughout the volume with its systematic and integrated economics-orientated coverage of the essential issues. Each of these-viz how do we use energy?; energy resources; research and development; widening the energy horizon; competition and regulation in energy markets; energy and the environment; and energy in an unstable worldis considered in a separate chapter. In addition, a preliminary discussion of the major themes of the energy problem (in a Peter R. Ode11 is Director, Centre national Energy Studies, Erasmus 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
for InterUniversity,
25 page introduction which ought to be required reading for all analysts, commentators and policy makers in the energy field), a 15 page epilogue (entitled “Living with some Chronic Issues”), and ‘insets’, in heavy typed pages, throughout the book which describe particularly important topics (eg “The Requisites for Recoverable Petroleum to exist in a Sedimentary Basin”, “Finite and Renewable page 62, Resources”, page 80, “How Reactors are Fueled”, page 111, “The Significance of Capital Intensity”, page 116, “Public Opinion and the Environment”, page 176) ensure that the reader is not only put in the right frame of mind for his/her attention to the subject, but also constantly reminded of the essential issues. The book (and not least its title) is deliberately-and successfully-populist, but, in spite of this, it avoids being patronizing. There is a wealth of information for readers who lack the specialized knowledge of energy production, use and economics, but detail for its own sake is always avoided. The information is, instead, used to illustrate and to demonstrate the wealth of ideas with which the authors are concerned. Of these, perhaps, the most important and the most recurrent in the book is the idea of choice in decisions on energy production and use in the modern, energy-intensive world, with both shortterm and longer-term costs and benefits having to be evaluated when making a choice for one particular decision, rather than for a number of alternatives. The authors clearly hold the view that the future of energy is an issue which is susceptible to rational analysis and to wise (rather than unwise) decisions: they also recognize, however, the propensity to irrationality in analysis and decision-
FUTURES August 1994
Boats
taking and, they do indeed see this as the most virulent element in the ‘uncertainty’ which the energy-future presents. Optimistically, one hopes that a book such as this could help to reduce irrationality in respect of energy decisions. This may well be the case for the USA, given the status of the Resources for the Future there as an institution, and the way in which the book’s presentation and organization, as well as its content, is structured to its use as an educational tool. A draft of the book was ‘customer tested’ through a group of students in a Science Technology and Public Policy Programme in a mid-West college and the authors say they responded to comment and criticism in the published version. Unhappily, this ‘US-customer tested product’ is not as useful for the wider world. Too much of the content is too specifically American and the book devotes too little attention to the international aspects of the energy problem. There is, of course, a discussion (albeit brief) on resources’ availability worldwide, and international energy institutions such as OPEC and the multinational oil corporations, but there are but passing references to energy supply/ demand issues in the rest of the industrialized world; and virtually nothing on the issues in respect of the centrally planned economies and the third world. These omissions could, relatively easily, be made good (and some of the detail on the USA-such as internal regulation of the oil and gas industries-omitted) and so make the book an even more important tool for heightening understanding of energy prospects at the global level. Global
issues
Energy2000-2020:World Pmspects and Regional Stressesis, on the other hand, as the title itself clearly indicates, concerned with global issues: disappointingly, however, the book is almost entirely unsuccessful in its presentation and analysis of the issues. Indeed, this book has a high
FUTURES August 1984
449
probability of ‘turning off’ even the most avid student of international energy questions. The reasons for this lie in the manner whereby the publication has emerged. The World Energy Conference (WEC)-an assemblage largely of vested interests in energy productionmeets every four years and its so-called Conservation Commission must, like all the other commissions of the conference, produce one or more documents for discussion at each meeting. This is the Conservation Commission’s publication for the September 1983 international gathering in New Delhi. Moreover, being an international organization working on the basis of representation by nation states, the WEC is also required in all its efforts to ensure that each Commission is representative of all global factions, so further ensuring that conclusions on serious issues are essentially lowest-commondenominator stuff-as is the case with this particular publication. Add to these near-insuperable handicaps to the production of a reasoned and consistent document the fact that the committee responsible for Energy 2000-2020 was enthusiastically committed by the predilection of its chairman and report COordinator, Dr J.-R. Frisch, to a massive number-crunching exercise as a means of achieving results on the future evolution of energy production and use, then there is a near-loo% certainty for an unreadable and unbelievable document. Some 40 ‘$5 of the pages (of the 259 in the main part of the book) are devoted to tables and lists of various kinds, while in the remaining pages a line of text without one or more statistics is rare. The poverty of the scientific background to all this conspicuous effort of counting and calculation is revealed in two ways. First, in Annex 24, the bibliography: apart from references to other WEC publications, to statistical yearbooks and the like, and to other similar number-crunching exercises at the global and national levels, there are but a handful of entries concerned with the
450
Books
analysis of issues in energy economics, technological research and development, resources’ availability, geopolitics of energy and demand, and supply environmental questions: the major elements picked out in the Resources for the Future book as the determinants of the energy outlook. Second, the methodology whereby the conclusions of the book are reached is set out in a single chapter of only nine pages, half of which are devoted to simple ‘where’ and ‘when’ questions. Nowhere in the book, the aim of which is to give a range of energy supply/demand forecasts by world region for the years 2000 and 2020, is there any explicit presentation of, for example, the assumptions on the price elasticity of supply-or demandfor different periods and different regions. Nor are the assumptions on the energy intensity of economic growth revealed, although, it is very generally agreed, these are absolutely fundamental as a basis for the kind of long-range forecasting with which the book claims to be centrally concerned. Regretfully, therefore, in spite of the
effort that has clearly been put into the calculations involved and in the presentation of the results, this book can be safely added to the many others of the last 10 years which in essence have had nothing rational to say about the world’s energy future. In spite of the daily prayers offered by the editor and the regular retreats he undertook to religious institutions (page xiv) as a means of achieving a successful conclusion for the project, the book makes no contribution to a more effective understanding of the energy problem and it cannot, therefore, make any contribution in the search for solutions. Its utility is thus in stark contrast with that of Energy: Today and Tomorrow.
Unhappily, in as far as the World Energy Conference has a much wider ‘contact system’ and far superior public relations than Resources for the Future, the use of the two books as backgrounds to, and/or justification for, energy policy decision taking seems likely to be close to the reciprocal of the scientific and intellectual content of the books they have sponsored.
A thought revolved Chris
Crickmay
Essays in Design J. Christopher Jones xiii + 335 pages, X9.95 John Wiley, 1984)
(Chichester,
UK,
Chris Jones may already be known to the reader for his papers at conferences on the future and his articles on futures topics. But he is perhaps best known for his book, Design Methods,’ which has become a standard text, translated into several languages and essential reading for anyone interested in design, or socioChris Crickmay is head of Art and Design at Dartington College of Arts, Totnes, Devon, UK.
technical change. It remains one of the few books to have tackled the shift in the scale of modern design problems from products to whole systems. It is still one of the best guides to the design process and the use of practical imagination in any field, dealing particularly with predesign investigation, or ‘thinking before drawing’. It is 14 years since the publication of Design Methods, and all the more interesting therefore to discover how the author’s views have developed. His new book, Essays in Design, published this year, looks at first sight like a radical if not a reversal of views. departure,
FUTURES August 1994