Energy Efficiency and Productive Efficiency: Some Thoughts Based on American Experience

Abstract

I am greatly honored to be the first recipient of the IAEE awards for contributions to the literature of energy economics and for service to the profession, and I want to express my deep apprecia- tion to the membership of the Association. The awards citation was very generous. Its reference to my early work in energy economics as having made fundamental contributions to the literature makes me less apologetic than might otherwise be the case for using this occasion to revisit (and partially update) some research that was first written up in a book published more than 20 years ago. Those findings, it seems to me, carry lessons for understanding problems that confront us today, perhaps even more so now than in the comparatively tran- quil U.S, energy setting of the mid-1950s, when my colleagues and I were originally doing the research.