Abstract This commentary on government publications covers the period 1974 to 1979. It is intended as an introductory text aimed at two overlapping audiences. First, it is addressed to those who are interested in the reasoning which lies behind the Government's technical arguments on energy policy in general and on energy conservation in buildings in particular. Secondly, it is directed towards those who seek to understand the social implications and consequences of these two areas of government policy. Not all the extracts brought together here represent official statements of policy. Some, indeed, are prefaced in their originals by specific disclaimers to this effect. Rather, they should be read as examples of arguments concerning energy policy—and conservation in buildings—voiced by a variety of individuals and groups capable of informing, influencing, or making decisions that affect this field of government activity. Those whose thinking is represented here range from a Prime Minister, Secretaries of State for Energy, other government ministers and departmental officials to outside specialists called upon by the Government to offer advice on particular aspects of its energy and conservation policies or programmes. The commentary which follows is unreal in several senses. Most obviously, perhaps, no such statement of government thinking is currently to be found in any one publication. Instead, it has had to be woven (and in some cases welded) together from extracts culled from thirty or so different documents. These have been published, for the most part, by the Stationery Office or under the auspices of the Department of Energy. Further, although the commentary is presented here as both sequential and continuous, it should not be supposed that the arguments which it contains are necessarily consistent or coherent. Instead, in some cases at least, they seem incompatible and may even be irreconcilable. And perhaps this is to be expected, given that the source material is drawn from such a wide variety of documents with such a range of authors. Neither is the commentary offered as exhaustive, as representative of all aspects of government thinking in this area. For example, documents published by the Department of the Environment—which also has responsibility for conservation in buildings—have not been cited, simply for the sake of brevity. A separate and complementary commentary could probably be constructed from such documents alone. In the preparation of this commentary, the chronological sequence in which statements were published has been maintained where this has seemed particularly pertinent or especially significant. And, in order to render the commentary realistic and the reportage faithful, an attempt has been made, where practicable, to retain—without the intrusion of external comment or criticism—the concepts, vocabulary and forms of expression used in the original extracts. Accordingly, the guiding principle underlying the compilation of this overview of government thinking has been to allow the statements drawn from government publications to speak for themselves.