The interest of governments in cogeneration and alternative energy power production has been reflected in a determination to remove whatever obstacles have existed as impediments to the development of alternative power sources — essentially the legal difficulty of selling independently produced power-and to the obstructionist attitude of the utilities themselves. This paper reviews the legal situation in a number of non-EEC industrial countries: The United States, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. It is in the United States that the greatest institutional changes have been made, through the establishment of a legal framework of enforced cooperation between the utilities and the autoproducers.