Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Sources and Archival Abbreviations
- Introduction: Solar Energy, Ideas, and Public Policy
- PART I BEFORE THE ENERGY CRISIS
- PART II DURING THE ENERGY CRISIS
- 5 Problem Frames During the Energy Crisis
- 6 Solar Advocacy in the Crisis
- 7 Limited Access: Solar Advocates and Energy Policy Frames
- 8 Solar Policy in Crisis
- 9 New Technologies, Old Ideas, and the Dynamics of Public Policy
- Notes
- Index
9 - New Technologies, Old Ideas, and the Dynamics of Public Policy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Sources and Archival Abbreviations
- Introduction: Solar Energy, Ideas, and Public Policy
- PART I BEFORE THE ENERGY CRISIS
- PART II DURING THE ENERGY CRISIS
- 5 Problem Frames During the Energy Crisis
- 6 Solar Advocacy in the Crisis
- 7 Limited Access: Solar Advocates and Energy Policy Frames
- 8 Solar Policy in Crisis
- 9 New Technologies, Old Ideas, and the Dynamics of Public Policy
- Notes
- Index
Summary
U.S. energy policy makers held remarkably consistent normative and technical ideas (sometimes called values and beliefs) about energy technologies for over three decades. Both types of ideas shaped the problem frame that officials used in thinking about energy policy. Policy elites who thought about the future and about new energy sources conceptualized their problems in terms of economic benefits and national security. Notions of economic benefits changed over time, from the idea that energy should be cheap to promote maximum economic growth to more refined notions that energy markets ought to be efficient to get optimal economic performance. Nonetheless, both notions point to getting energy at the lowest possible price. Discussions of national security emphasized importing oil from sources that would not be interrupted by political acts.
Precisely how policy makers expressed their values and beliefs depended on the contingent circumstances in which they found themselves, but both sets of dominant ideas made for a problem definition that greatly disadvantaged solar advocates. Because of its high market prices, solar was hardpressed to compete with fossil fuels, and because of its diffuse nature, it did not fit into the existing energy production system the way nuclear power promised to do. Although policy makers began to include an assortment of environmental protection values into their frames, that did little to alter the situation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Solar Energy, Technology Policy, and Institutional Values , pp. 180 - 192Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001