Jan./Feb. 1984 RAIN Page 25 consumption. This book discusses some of these options and cites case studies from different communities. Options available on a city or county level will vary with state laws. Methods that have been successfully used around the country include: • changing building codes; • screening for energy conservation as part of the process for permitting new construction; • giving tax breaks for conservation; • providing capital for retrofits in the form of low interest loans; • restructuring public transportation to decrease the use of private automobiles; • producing energy in hydro or resource recovery plants. This book is slightly dated, but it is still a useful tool for local energy planners.— Gail Katz Solarizing America: The Davis Experience, by Edward L. Vine, 1981,153 pp., $9.95 from: Conference on Alternative State and Local Policies 2000 Florida Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20009 One of the earliest and most successful attempts to implement energy conservation on a local level through government regulation occurred in Davis, California. This case study documents the steps taken in making this project work. Davis is a college town in the Sacramento Valley of California. In the early 1970s a group in Davis recognized energy as a critical planning issue on a local level. Campaigning on this issue and several related environmental issues, three members of this group were elected to the city council. Once in a position of power, the group hired a consultant to draft a building code that would minimize energy consumption in single-family and multi-family dwellings by utilizing the principles of passive solar design. The most interesting aspect of this project was the human element. At the inception of the code revision, builders, developers, and some city officials were hostile to the idea of an energy code. Review meetings, education about the new code, and compromise produced an atmosphere close to neutrality by the time the code went into effect. Time and experience created a positive attitude in most of the people originally opposed to the code. —Gail Katz Least-Cost Energy: Solving the CO2 Problem, by Amory B. Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins, Florentin Krause, and Wilfrid Bach, 1981,184 pp., $17.95 hardcover from: Brick House Publishing Company 34 Essex Street Andover, MA 01810 This study, published two years ago, has taken on new significance in light of recently released reports from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Academy of Sciences. Both reports predict dramatic changes in global climate patterns during the coming decades as a result of carbon dioxide (CO2) buildup in the atmosphere. The reason for the expected increase in CO2: continued heavy reliance on fossil fuels worldwide. The Lovinses and their colleagues (Krause is a fellow energy analyst and Bach is a climatologist) firmly reject the premise that we are trapped in a "no exit" lane of fossil fuel dependence. The authors believe that immediate global commitment to a "soft" energy path (efficiency improvements combined with environmentally benign renewable energy sources) could drastically reduce the rate at which CO2 is added to the atmosphere and at least postpone serious climatic effects by many decades. Furthermore, they conclude that such an energy strategy is the only one that makes any longterm economic sense. As is usual with a Lovins energy study, Least-Cost Energy is buttressed with an impressive array of statistical evidence. Although the book is quite accessible to the lay reader, its method of presentation is obviously calculated to make an impression on the climatologists and energy planners who are still operating under what the authors believe to be outdated and dangerous assumptions about the future. The transition to a soft energy path, they emphasize, must be "short, purposeful, and direct." Is there a realistic hope that this transition will be accomplished in time? The authors put their faith in grassroots action. They are fully aware of the obstacles presented by cultural conditioning, institutional inertia, false price signals, and vested economic interests, but they still believe that "at least in the Western democracies," the energy problem is being rapidly solved—"but from the bottom up, not from the top down; central government may be the last to know." —JF From: Energy Production Handbook
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