Under a contract from the Commission of the European Communities (EC), the linkage between the energy problem and the national R&D strategies of a group of countries was investigated in the light of the results of IIASA's long-term global energy study, documented in the Energy System Program Group's comprehensive report Energy in a Finite World (1981). In considering what may be feasible over the next fifty years in other  industrialized world regions, substantial discordance is revealed between the desires of these countries for economic growth, energy conservation, and energy imports, and the need for a global balance between energy  demand and supply. 

A way of gradually harmonizing regional energy strategies with the constraints on resources and technologies identified with the IIASA global scenarios has been developed.  The two alternative scenarios developed are based on a macroeconomically optimal allocation of capital, manpower, and energy.  Given the limited oil imports of the EC in IIASA's global projections, two limiting scenarios are presented to indicate the narrow technological choice in a medium to long term future for the EC countries of low economic growth:  the two scenarios have either coal or nuclear power as the favored energy option, supplemented by the other source.