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Environmental concerns have rekindled interest in energy conservation. The central question is efficiency, and calculation of efficiency requires a numerator: the absolute minimum primary fuel necessary to produce a given product or to provide a given service. Most articles on energy conservation address this question through classical thermodynamics, with Gibbs's notion of Availability (Keenan, 1951,1941, 1932).1 Classical thermodynamics treats systems in stable equilibrium, whereas the physical operations of production are designed to place systems in extreme nonequilibrium states. The classical approach is limited and can obscure possible modes of technical change exploiting nonequilibrium phenomena which can greatly increase efficiency.