A method is presented to calculate the hypothesized dynamo mean electric field required to sustain reversed field pinch (RFP) plasmas in time‐independent states such as have been observed in recent RFP experiments. It is also shown how to simultaneously calculate energy transport in terms of a phenomenological radial thermal conductivity &kgr;. It was found that the dynamo extracts energy from the central plasma in order to drive the large azimuthal current needed by the RFP. The quantitative results are only weakly sensitive to the choice of parameters. The principal predictions are the distribution of the dynamo mean electric field in the plasma and the ratio between average and peak electrical conductivity. The theory is compared with experimental RFP data, and it is concluded that the mean plasma resistivity is not much different from the classical resistivity of Spitzer.