Article ID: CBB526682482

Redefining Efficiency: US Physicists and the 1970s Energy Crisis (2024)

unapi

Amid a war in Southeast Asia, fomenting campus radicalism, and a looming energy crisis, a number of physicists shifted from the big science endeavors of post-war physics toward a new and little science of energy efficiency. These moves were actively supported by the American Physical Society, which took various ongoing crises as an opportunity to create employment opportunities and harness enthusiasm for more socially engaged physics. The Society’s 1974 Summer School on efficient energy use was illustrative. Participants came from universities, national laboratories, industry organizations, and utility companies. Together, they estimated efficiency savings believed achievable at certain points in the US energy system. The summer school attendees argued energy efficiency should be redefined according to the second law of thermodynamics rather than the first. This approach allowed energy-using appliances to be reconceived of as sources of energy supply as well as demand. Rigorous estimates of potential savings were made. However, to the ire of more radical physicists, the school placed the onus to conserve on the consumer, ignored industrial energy use, and had avoided drastic measures. In revisiting these events, their lead-up and afterlife, this paper historicizes a now-central tenet of energy policy.

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Authors & Contributors
Gold, Barri J.
Pohl Valero, Stefan
Battimelli, Giovanni
Coelho, Ricardo Lopes
Deser, S.
Jones, Anna Maria
Journals
Environmental History
European Physical Journal H
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
Journal of Global History
Science and Education
Social Studies of Science
Publishers
Duke University Press
Editorial Universidad Javeriana
Johns Hopkins University
MIT Press
Oxford University Press
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Concepts
Thermodynamics
Energy (physics)
Physics
Science and literature
Energy policy
Conservation of energy (physical concept)
People
Adams, Henry
Bergson, Henri Louis
Driesch, Hans Adolf Eduard
Durkheim, Émile
Helm, Georg Ferdinand
Joule, James Prescott
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, late
20th century, early
21st century
Places
United States
Great Britain
Spain
California (U.S.)
Italy
New York City (New York, U.S.)
Institutions
Great Britain. Royal Navy
RAND Corporation
European Union
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