Preface

The Energy Policy Project was initiated by the Ford Foundation in 1971 to explore alternative national energy policies. This book, The American Energy Consumer, is one of a series of special studies which the Project commissioned. It is presented here as a carefully prepared contribution to public understanding of how people, of various groups and income classes, use energy and what they pay for it.

It is our hope that each of the special reports in this series will stimulate further thinking and questioning in the particular areas it addresses. At most, however, each one deals with only part of the energy puzzle. The Project's already-published final report, A Time To Choose: America's Energy Future, attempts to integrate these parts into a comprehensible whole, setting forth our analysis, conclusions and recommendations for the nation's energy future.

This book, like the others in the series, has been reviewed by scholars and experts in the field not otherwise associated with the Project, in order to be sure that differing points of view were considered. With each book in the series, we offer reviewers the opportunity of having their comments published; one has chosen to do so with this volume (see page 305).

The American Energy Consumer is the authors' report to the Energy Policy Project, and neither the Project, nor its Advisory Board, nor the Ford Foundation assume the role of endorsing its contents or conclusions. The Project's views are expressed in our final report, A Time to Choose.

S. David Freeman
Director
Energy Policy Project