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Conservation and reduction in demand
United States
To help reduce consumption, in 1974 a national maximum speed limit of 55 mph (about 88 km/h) was imposed through the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act. Development of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve began in 1975, and in 1977 the cabinet-level Department of Energy was created, followed by the National Energy Act of 1978.[citation needed] On November 28, 1995, Bill Clinton signed the National Highway Designation Act, ending the federal 55 mph (89 km/h) speed limit, allowing states to restore their prior maximum speed limit.
Year-round daylight saving time was implemented from January 6, 1974, to October 27, 1975, with a break between October 27, 1974 and February 23, 1975, when the country observed standard time. The move spawned significant criticism because it forced many children to travel to school before sunrise. The prior rules were restored in 1976.[citation needed]
Gas stations abandoned during the crisis were sometimes used for other purposes. This station at Potlatch, Washington, was turned into a revival hall.
The crisis prompted a call to conserve energy, most notably a campaign by the Advertising Council using the tagline "Don't Be Fuelish".[40] Many newspapers carried advertisements featuring cut-outs that could be attached to light switches, reading "Last Out, Lights Out: Don't Be Fuelish."[citation needed]
By 1980, domestic luxury cars with a 130-inch (3.3 m) wheelbase and gross weights averaging 4,500 pounds (2,041 kg) were no longer made. The automakers had begun phasing out the traditional front engine/rear wheel drive layout in compact cars in favor of lighter front engine/front wheel drive designs. A higher percentage of cars offered more efficient 4-cylinder engines. Domestic auto makers also began offering more fuel efficient diesel powered passenger cars as well.
Though not regulated by the new legislation, auto racing groups voluntarily began conserving. In 1974, the 24 Hours of Daytona was cancelled and NASCAR reduced all race distances by 10%; the 12 Hours of Sebring race was cancelled.[citation needed]
In 1976, Congress created the Weatherization Assistance Program to help low-income homeowners and renters reduce their demand for heating and cooling through better insulation.[citation needed]
Alternative energy sources
A woman uses wood in a fireplace for heat. A newspaper headline before her tells of the community's lack of heating oil.
The energy crisis led to greater interest in renewable energy, nuclear power and domestic fossil fuels.[41] According to Peter Grossman, American energy policies since the crisis have been dominated by crisis-mentality thinking, promoting expensive quick fixes and single-shot solutions that ignore market and technology realities. He wrote that instead of providing stable rules that support basic research while leaving plenty of scope for entrepreneurship and innovation, congresses and presidents have repeatedly backed policies which promise solutions that are politically expedient, but whose prospects are doubtful.[42]
The Brazilian government implemented its "Proálcool" (pro-alcohol) project in 1975 that mixed ethanol with gasoline for automotive fuel.[43]
Israel was one of the few countries unaffected by the embargo, since it could extract sufficient oil from the Sinai. But to supplement Israel's over-taxed power grid, Harry Zvi Tabor, the father of Israel's solar industry, developed the prototype for a solar water heater now used in over 90% of Israeli homes.[44]
Macroeconomy
The crisis was a major factor in shifting Japan's economy away from oil-intensive industries. Investment shifted to industries such as electronics. Japanese auto makers also benefited from the crisis. Increased fuel costs allowed their small, fuel-efficient models to gain market share from the "gas-guzzling" American competition. This triggered a drop in American auto sales that lasted into the 1980s.
Western central banks decided to sharply cut interest rates to encourage growth, deciding that inflation was a secondary concern. Although this was the orthodox macroeconomic prescription at the time, the resulting stagflation surprised economists and central bankers. The policy is now considered by some to have deepened and lengthened the adverse effects of the embargo. Recent research claims that in the period after 1985 the economy became more resilient to energy price increases.[45]
The price shock created large current account deficits in oil-importing economies. A petrodollar recycling mechanism was created, through which OPEC surplus funds were channeled through the capital markets to the West to finance the current account deficits. The functioning of this mechanism required the relaxation of capital controls in oil-importing economies. It marked the beginning of an exponential growth of Western capital markets.[46]
Many in the public remain suspicious of oil companies, believing they profiteered, or even colluded with OPEC. In 1974, seven of the fifteen top Fortune 500 companies were oil companies, falling to four in 2014.
Also in the UK,OPEC literally made it more viable for North Sea oil production:
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Spending cuts are shrinking a $98 billion budget deficit that was created by oil’s plunge. Foreign investors are eagerly buying Saudi bonds, and the government has begun to shake up its bureaucracy and simplify regulation, promising efficiency gains.
The move to alternate technologies took some time,but ultimately the 1970s price fixing is what spurned countries into action.
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SAN FRANCISCO—China’s state-controlled chip vendor Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd. announced plans to build a $30 billion memory chip in Nanjing, a city in eastern China.
Tsinghua, which has acquired several chip vendors and facilities over the past few years, is also building a $24 billion memory fab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, announced last March.
Tsinghua said it plans to build DRAM and 3D NAND flash at the Nanjing fab. The first phase of the project will cost about $10 billion and result in the production capacity to produce 100,000 wafers per month, the company said. No timetable was provided for the project.
In 2015, Tsingua made an unsuccessful bid to acquire U.S. memory chip vendor Micron Technology Inc. for $23 billion.
China has been aggressively pursuing a goal of creating a strong domestic semiconductor industry to supply chips to its massive internal market. The Chinese government last year announced plans to invest $160 billion over 10 years to bolster its semiconductor industry.
The building of memory chip fabs has been widely anticipated as China's next move. Last month, Rob Lineback, a senior market research analyst with IC Insights, told EE Times that it “makes sense that memory would be in the crosshairs of Chinese initiatives” because of the country’s appetite for memory to use in the production of Chinese-built products such as PCs, data center servers, tablets, and smartphones, plus a wide range of other applications.
China may have little choice but to build its semiconductor industry from the ground up after Western governments—particularly the U.S.—have grown increasingly wary of government-owned Chinese firms seeking to acquire Western companies. The Committee for Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CIFUS) has stepped in to thwart multiple acquisition bids, and last month President Obama took the rare step of blocking the acquisition of the U.S. assets of a German semiconductor equipment company by an investment firm with ties to the Chinese government.
Earlier this month, the White House made public a strongly worded report on the U.S. semiconductor industry and the threat posed to it by China. The report argues that the U.S. semiconductor industry needs to innovate and “run faster” in order to counter the threat posed by Chinese policies that distort the market in its favor.
It will take years,but it only means they will have less and less of the market they had. 
