Comment: Energy Accounting: The Case of Farm Machinery in Maryland

Prior to the 1970s, energy accounting was the primary domain of physical scientists or engineers. The world of thermodynamics, rigorous concepts of energy ratios and entropy, seemed safe within their laboratories where, for example, the relative energy efficiency of solid and liquid fuels was assessed for powering an industrial heating system. This apparent orderly state of affairs—measurement primarily in controlled laboratory conditions—seemed to change abruptly in 1973 with the OPEC oil embargo. Energy accounting became the chore, if not the mission, of a myriad of scientists, engineers, businessmen, bureaucrats, and politicians. Understandably, the journals and other periodicals of our profession now abound with proposals on how to measure energy and how to employ these measures in making decisions and developing government policies.