Solar Energy, Technology Policy, and Institutional Values (review)

In this compact volume, Frank Laird asks why solar energy, whose future seemed bright during the energy crises of the 1970s, never attracted lasting governmental commitment. Laird contends that its advocates failed to persuade [End Page 184] key policymakers that solar could solve the energy problem as they defined it. He succeeds on the most important criterion: his analysis of solar history seems correct. Nevertheless, because he writes as an institutional analyst, with corresponding goals, his treatment may frustrate historians of technology and energy professionals, who read for different reasons

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