Book excerpt: It is universally recognized that the end of the current and the beginning of the next century will be characterized by a radical change in the existing trends in the economic development of all countries and a transition to new principles of economic management on the basis of a resource and energy conservation policy. Thus there is an urgent necessity to study methods, technical aids and economic consequences of this change, and particularly, to determine the possible amounts of energy resources which could be conserved (energy "reserves") in different spheres of the national economy. An increased interest towards energy conservation in industry, one of the largest energy consumers, is quite natural and is manifested by the large num ber of publications on this topic. But the majority of publications are devoted to the solution of narrowly defined problems, determination of energy reserves in specific processes and plants, efficiency estimation of individual energy conserva tion measures, etc. However, it is necessary to develop a general methodological approach to the solution of such problems and create a scientific and methodical base for realizing an energy conservation policy. Such an effort is made in this book, which is concerned with methods for studying energy use efficiency in technological processes and estimation of the theoretical and actual energy reserves in a given process, technology, or industrial sector on the basis of their complete energy balances.