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"high" case, installed capacity must more than double by the year 2000. Even under "moderate" case assumptions, the nation must add 23,000 MW annually through the end of the century. Less than forty percent of this capacity appears in utility construction plans.143

The capital requirements for even the "moderate" case are staggering. DOE pegs the "cumulative investment required of the electric utility industry through 2000" at $1 trillion in 1982 dollars, some seventy-one percent of which reflects the construction costs of new generating capacity.14 This effort would absorb between five and eleven percent of gross private domestic investment over the next two decades." The necessary capital would be assembled by a national utility industry that DOE describes as follows:

[T]he industry continues to experience realized returns well below authorized returns. . . . [T]he quality of earnings remains poor; no other major industry has as low a fraction of cash earnings. . [B]ond ratings remain substantially depressed. . . . [A]lthough showing some improvement in the last year, the market-to-book ratio of the industry is only 40 percent of its level in the 1960s.1 According to DOE, there is no time available to reflect on the wisdom or necessity of its ambitious program: "affirmative decisions on new plants are needed today because of the current long lead times on plant construction.""""

What of conservation? The report ignores regulatory options completely. As to incentives, DOE invokes the no losers test and argues that, in many regions, conservation would raise electricity rates.147 In DOE's view, utilities "will support efficient conservation" only if resulting plant deferrals "will lower rates over time." DOE disclaims any "attempt to define the amounts of different potential efficiency measures which are economically feasible in particular parts of the country or in the country as a

141. Id. at 4-5, n.7. 142. Id. at 6-13.

143. Id. at 6-16.

144. Id. at 6-24.

145. Id. at ES-20 to ES-21.

146. Id. at 3-1.

147. Id. at 5-48.

148. Id. at 5-71.

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whole." The report alternatively deems such a task unprecedented, "forbidding,” “impossible," and "meaningless."160

Those adjectives can be put to much better use in an evaluation of DOE's own recommendations. As the preceding excerpts demonstrate, DOE's blueprint for fiscal suicide incorporates its own refutation. The agency's prescriptions and warnings are almost indistinguishable in pedigree from their thoroughly discredited Northwest precursors. No analysis beyond that provided earlier in this Article is needed by way of response.

Two national advertising campaigns are now testing whether the American public is willing to pay the price of a thermal power future.11 In the long run, an affirmative answer is simply untenable. In the short run, only a triumph of human credulity will enlarge an economic pit that already has claimed too many innocent victims.

149. Id. at 5-54. 150. Id.

151. The Edison Electric Institute, a national utility trade association, originated one of these campaigns. See D. Pauly, Power Shortage Or Sham?, Newsweek 63 (June 13, 1983) (expenditures on nationwide effort total $2 million). Illustrative excerpts follow:

Will we have the power to sustain economic recovery? . . . Right now, the electric utility industry should be increasing its investments in programs to ... develop new capacity to meet the needs of an expanding economy. [From full-page advertisement in N.Y. Times, Apr. 10, 1983, § 4, at E7.]

Power is the key to America's future. . . . Not only will our use of electricity increase substantially with a step-up in industrial activity, increased electricity use and supply are essential to the nation's sustained economic recovery. . . . Unfortunately, most of the decisions being made today are weighted toward not building for the future. [From full-page advertisement in N.Y. Times, May 1, 1983, § 4, at 22E).

Similar assertions dominate a parallel campaign, designed primarily to promote nuclear power, that is sponsored by the utility-funded United States Committee for Energy Awareness. See, e.g., The Electric Age: Rebirth or Retreat?, THE NEW REPUBLIC 2-3 (Aug. 15 & 22, 1983) (two-page advertisement arguing that “[c]oal and nuclear electricity are our best options”); Nucleonics Week 8 (July 21, 1983) (about half of Committee's $25 million 1983 budget will be spent on advertising).