Unfortunately for utility companies, Carnot’s theorem was not the only surprise that awaited them as dawn broke over the 1970s. They had been encouraged to switch from burning coal to burning oil in the 1950s and ’60s—a costly retrofitting of power plants that was en vigor as the first OPEC oil embargo hit in 1973. The drastic fuel shortage that ensued saw prices rise more than 70 percent almost overnight and the notion of the shortage, as much as the reality of it, hit mainstream America like a sledgehammer.
