n023  0923  09 Apr 77
 
BC-WASHINGTONews Service
     WASHINGTON - On the second floor of the Executive Office Building,
next door to the White House, 15 economists, public administrators
and lawyers are shaping the much heralded National Energy Plan that
President Carter is scheduled to propose to Congress on April 20.
     They and a support staff of 25 secretaries and clerks are working
early and late, weekdays and weekends, even on Easter.
     Despite the grind, morale seems to be high. There is a sense of
purpose, that they are drafting a piece of America's future - one of
the most ambitious, politically risky and socially far-reaching
efforts that will emerge from Jimmy Carter's presidency.
     Most of the energy planners are under 40. All are white males
except two young women with junior positions. None comes from an oil
company. Their backgrounds center on government service and
university teaching. Several agree that they could be described,
over-simply perhaps, as ''public-sector oriented.''
     In other words, unlike the Nixon-Ford energy planners, the Carter
people emphasize the role of government, not business, in coping with
the country's growing shortage of indigenous, clean energy.
     The Ford planners tended to define the energy problem primarily in
terms of inadequate domestic supplies. Ford asked Congress to
authorize a $100 billion effort to develop nuclear power, gas from
coal and oil from shale.
     Carter and his planners are emphasizing conservation - using less
energy and using it more efficiently - and shfting industry from oil
and natural gas, both increasingly scarce, to coal, the country's
most abundant fossil fuel. Nuclear energy is being soft-pedaled,
although privately the planners do not dispute the Ford people'ectric power nee-
ds.
     None of the Carter people is beating the drum for more oil and gas.
The administration holds that these resources are being depleted and
need to be used less.
    With a few exceptions, the Carter energy planners have in common
previous work on some aspect of energy or a prior association with
James R. Schlesinger, the President's energy adviser, who is
directing the planning exercise.
     ''He turned on the vacuum cleaner and sucked a few of us up,''
commented William A. Morrill, who at 47 is one of the group's
graybeards. His association with Schlesinger goes back to the late
1960s when both worked at the Bureau of the Budget, now the Office of
Management and Budget.
     More recently, Morrill was an Assistant Secretary of Health,
Education and Welfare for planning and evaluation. A career public
administrator, he once took a year off to serve as deputy executive
of Fairfax County, Va. in suburban Washington. In January, Morrill
asked Schlesinger to appraise several nongovernment jobs that he,
Morrill, was considering. Instead of accepting one, he harkened to
his old friend's plea for help in a pioneeering venture, but he may
yet leave the Government.
    Others harkened, too, evidently because they liked Schlesinger, a
48-year-old economist who likes to talk about history and politics,
and because they were intrigued with shaping what Schlesinger
describes as a radically new approach to the use of resources - an
approach that says less is better. This response of former associates
is interesting because Schlesinger is known in Washington as a
high-powered analyst and advocate who can be gracious but who
sometimes is also openly arrogant or harsh.
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