Solar Energy, Technology Policy, and Institutional Values

by Frank N. Laird

• ISBN13: 9780521782470
• ISBN10: 0521782473
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-03-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Energy policies that promote new technologies and energy sources are policies for the future. They influence the shape of emergent technological systems, and also condition our social, political and economic lives. Solar Energy, Technology Policy, and Institutional Values demonstrates the difficulties of deliberating such properties by providing a historical case study that analyses US renewable energy policy from the end of World War II through the energy crisis of the 1970s. The book illuminates the ways beliefs and values come to dominate official problem frames and get entrenched in institutions. In doing so it also explains why advocates of renewable energy have often faced ideological opposition, and why policy makers fail to take them seriously.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xiii
Note on Sources and Archival Abbreviations	xvii
Introduction: Solar Energy, Ideas, and Public Policy	1	(18)
PART I BEFORE THE ENERGY CRISIS
Framing the Energy Problem Before the Energy Crisis	19	(15)
Creating Policy for the Future	34	(20)
Advocates Construct Solar Technology	54	(11)
Solar Energy's Incompatibility with Official Problems Frames	65	(20)
PART II DURING THE ENERGY CRISIS
Problem Frames During the Energy Crisis	85	(31)
Solar Advocacy in the Crisis	116	(20)
Limited Access: Solar Advocates and Energy Policy Frames	136	(18)
Solar Policy in Crisis	154	(26)
New Technologies, Old Ideas, and the Dynamics of Public Policy	180	(13)
Notes	193	(53)
Index	246