Energy plays a pervasive and critically important role in economic and social development. The identification and analysis of energy issues, and the development of energy policy options, are therefore important areas of study by governments, researchers, and the development community. But until the first oil price shock of 1973, neither developed nor developing countries conducted sector-wide energy planning: such planning as was done was left to the subsectoral institutions with little attempt at coordination or central planning. All that changed, of course, in the aftermath of the first oil crisis, and countries everywhere struggled with the establishment of effective policies and institutions to deal with energy sector problems. This effort intensified in the aftermath of the second oil price shock, and by the early 1980s most developing (and developed) countries had established some formal energy planning activity. Very simply put, the sharp increase in the real oil price resulted in severe macroeconomic consequences to the low-income, oil-developing countries, to which appropriate responses needed to be developed.

As the price of oil began to fall, gradually in the first half of the 1980s, then collapsed in 1986, other issues joined the forefront of energy planning activity. In many developing countries the question of the linkages between fuelwood use and deforestation gained increasing attention, and energy planners took leading roles in the formulation and implementation of policies to arrest rates of deforestation by promoting more efficient use of fuelwood. More generally, energy related environmental concerns that have emerged recently are likely to dominate in the 1990s and beyond.