104 Book Reviews 
is useful in involving the reader in the difficulties of those who work in the field 
Reviewed by Joe Hampson, School of Social Work, Harare 
Integrated Rural Energy Planning, edited by Yehia ElMahgary and Asit I 
Biswas, Butterworth, 1985 (no price quoted). 
This volume is the proceedings of a workshop organised by the Unitei 
Nations Environment Programme and the International Society for Ecologica 
Modelling. As such, the ten country case papers presented reflect the stage o 
progress in the countries concerned, progress which is bound to be uneven. Th< 
difference in their approaches to development range from one which reduce: 
the recipient population to the status of passive consumers of carefully 
controlled amounts of a specified form of energy (Senegal) to the engagingly 
'suck it and see' approach of an Indian experimental/demonstration village 
Two of the studies describe well developed purpose-built village system; 
which integrate several renewable energy sources; the well-known Xinbi 
energy village in south China and UNEP project in Sri Lanka. The purpose o 
the workshop may well have been to review the applicability and progress o 
the 'Xinbu model', but the emphasis seems to have moved from 'integrate< 
rural energy systems' to 'integrated planning of rural energy systems' and thi: 
shift will make the findings of the workshop more useful. 
Three case reports deal with what are primarily desk exercises in nations 
planning (in Colombia, Nigeria and Indonesia), while a couple more focus 01 
the village use of one particular technology. I found those which reported 01 
the integration of more than one renewable energy technology into an existing 
community or region the most interesting, and the paper on Dodoma region 
Tanzania, sounds chords which will strike echoes throughout the savanna an< 
semiarid regions of sub-Saharan Africa. 
The 'Xinbu model' may only be possible with the degree of communit 
organistion and the low income differentials of China. The Sri Lanka casi 
study suggests that, apart from the cost of the resident expert staff, the capita 
expense involved in installing equipment for some of the technologie 
concerned can only be recovered in regions as densely populated as soutl 
Asia, and outside these regions this equipment could hardly be adequate!1 
maintained. This applies to all but the simplest solar photovoltaic systems an< 
possibly to the community use of a network of biogas digesters.
Book Reviews 
Few of these papers address the broader reasons for promoting the us< 
renewable sources of energy, and the Sri Lanka study, which does so in m 
detail, pursues an argument which risks slowing the drive to develop th 
sources. This argument emphasises the high price of petroleum produ 
which applied from 1979 until about the date of this workshop, but the rea 
for switching to renewable sources should surely not be that oil prices ' 
continue to rise, but that oil is effectively a nonrenewable resource and mus 
replaced eventually. Letting short-term economic considerations, like 
recent drop in world oil prices, govern the rate of development of alternai 
sources is to risk being unprepared when there finally is no choice but to tun 
renewables. 
The final chapter of this volume, guidelines for planning, is timely and e1 
were it for this chapter alone the book should find a place on the shelves of 
growing number of people who are focusing on this area. 
Reviewed by Brian MacGarry, Silveira House, Harare, Zimbabwe.