If they are concerned about climate protection, they may like to know that energy efficiency can provide it not at a cost but at a profit. For example, a company or an individual hiring an architect or an engineer would do well to pay that designer for — or, pay those designers for what they saved, not for what they spend, which is the traditional method of compensation. The government should get the rules right. If the gospel of energy efficiency has an evangelist, it must be Amory B. Lovins. Our latest data center design saves about 80 percent of the energy and 15 to 50 percent of the capital cost, depending on whether they buy anyway the chillers they will no longer need.Or, we had a recent design for a mine that will use no fossil fuel and no electricity; it runs on gravity. And saving three-quarters of the electricity would take several decades, because we would need both to build new things in a much smarter way and to retrofit existing buildings and factories — bearing in mind that about 70 percent of our electricity goes to buildings and 30 percent to factories.Now, there are ways to speed this up, like mass retrofits. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Amory Lovins, co-founder and chairman of Rocky Mountain Institute, says that world’s biggest untapped energy source is efficiency. This widens the price spread between more and less efficient models, enough so that you will pay attention to lifecycle fuel savings, not just the first year or two. We moved in in January 1984, after a year and a half of construction. So that would be 24 years, now almost 25. I am driving in a lot of snow and slush and mostly in snow tires, and it gets 61-point-something.e360: How does that get that mileage?Lovins: Well, it weighs only 1889 pounds. And it has a very efficient, slightly-under-one-liter engine with an electric hybrid, boosted by a 10-kilowatt motor on the upper shaft, and it’s got also a very good aerodynamics and tires. The talk (preceded by my performance of … As Big Energy Gains, Can Europe’s Community Renewables Compete? Similarly, if you are proposing to examine someone’s house or factory to look for energy saving opportunities, I’d suggest do not call it an energy audit, which makes people think of the IRS, perhaps an energy survey would be more interesting.e360: What about coinages like fee-bates and negawatts?Lovins: I think they’re in fairly common usage by now, especially “negawatts”, which was a typo I spotted in a Colorado PUC document several decades ago and spread around, or the economists’ term “micro-power” to embrace both co-generation and distributive renewables is a very useful term. We’re working on a refinery that will probably need no natural gas, no electricity and no outside water, but cost less and work better.These examples are among a much larger list, totaling over $30 billion worth of facilities in 29 sectors, that we’ve recently redesigned for radical energy efficiency with our private-sector partners. Forest Defenders: A Panamanian Tribe Regains Control of Its Lands, As World’s Deltas Sink, Rising Seas Are Far from Only Culprit. For four decades, Amory Lovins has been a leading proponent of a renewable power revolution that would wean the U.S. off fossil fuels and usher in an era of energy independence. For example, many, if not most, Americans think of the term “energy conservation” as connoting privation, discomfort and curtailment, that is, doing less, worse or without. According to energy expert, Amory Lovins, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute, the energy industry has vastly misunderstood the scope of the energy efficiency resource. It is rated (mileage) the highest in the market, although they pulled it off the market some months ago, because it sold poorly, not because it isn’t a great car, but because the two-seat segment in extremely small. Can Geothermal Power Play a Key Role in the Energy Transition? The concept was developed after Amory Lovins authored an article published in the March 21, 1985 issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly arguing that utility companies will sell less electricity and more efficiency by marketing 'negawatts'. The Plowboy Interviews spotlights Amory Lovins, energy Analyst and environmentalist and author of the 1976 essay, "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?" On energy efficiency and the “negawatt” revolution: “There is an enormous amount more to be done: we could improve the efficiency of US buildings by 2050 at historically reasonable rates by a factor of three or four, with about a 33% internal rate of return.” On carbon removal: “I haven’t yet seen an economically attractive CCS option…I think the way forward on … Energy efficiency is limited by the laws of thermodynamics, but by one global estimate, 2005 global Second Law efficiency (AIP 1975) of energy conversion systems was only ~11% (Cullen and Allwood 2011), i.e., energy use was 9× the theoretical minimum, so including also passive systems, '85% of energy demand could be practically avoided using current … Our next fab design after that, by the way, will save about two-thirds of the energy and half the capital costs. ... We can see a very clear way forward to trebling energy efficiency by 2050." In his 2011 book - Reinventing Fire - Lovins made a case for energy transformation in society using business- and market-driven techniques. Why should I fix up the building if the landlord owns it, and why should the landlord fix it if I pay the bills? Most economic theorists assume that energy efficiency—the biggest global provider of energy services—is a limited and dwindling resource whose price- and policy-driven adoption will inevitably deplete its potential and raise its cost. So if what we mean is, as in my case, doing more and better with less energy and money, but with more brains and technology, then we should call it energy efficiency or raising energy productivity. Most climate modelers explicitly or tacitly use economic theory as the dominant framework for assessing potential technological gains in energy end-use efficiency (Lovins 2018a) 1.Economic theory tends to treat energy efficiency as a limited and dwindling Ricardian resource (like … This is, of course, consistent with the policy framework I suggested a moment ago, in which all technologies should compete on merit, not by lobbying power.e360: How important are (the recent) elections in moving in the direction you’re talking about?Lovins: Well, we’ll see. Never miss a feature! However, the federal government could certainly encourage that, as it has encouraged many other previous utility reforms, without preempting state authority. And in the retrofit projects we typically save 30 to 60 percent of the energy with two- or three-year paybacks. That’s because, in order to move their vehicles from the fee zone to the rebate zone, they add technology content that tends to have a higher profit margin than the rest of the vehicle.The third important thing I’d suggest is to de-subsidize the entire energy sector systematically. Amory Lovins founded the Rocky Mountain Institute in 1982 to promote energy efficiency. This was the capping event of Verge 2013, a conference on commerce and sustainability run by Makower’s GreenBiz Group.. A $500 billion investment in energy efficiency right now would pay off in $1.2 trillion in savings down the road, says Jon Creyts, a program director at Lovins’ think tank, Rocky Mountain Institute. And that explains exactly how to save half the oil and gas at average costs of roughly 12 bucks a barrel and under a dollar per million BTU. Power Q&A: Amory Lovins The energy-efficiency guru who cofounded the Rocky Mountain Institute advocates feebates, negawatts, and letting the little guys play. Forest Defenders: A Panamanian Tribe Regains Control of Its Lands, As World’s Deltas Sink, Rising Seas Are Far from Only Culprit. Amory Lovins; Download. And there’s a lot of barrier-busting needed at all levels of government as well as firms and households. It seems as though your work focuses very much on the private sector.Lovins: Well, barrier-busting is needed in the public and private sectors, and in fact many of the biggest obstacles are at the level of the firm. I talked to a wide range of audiences and for some it is not appropriate. That’s because we use integrated design to get expanding, not diminishing returns. Amory B. Lovins is fond of referring to the Rocky Mountain Institute, where he serves as chairman and chief scientist, as a “think and do” tank, and it’s clear that to Lovins the doing is every bit as important as the thinking. Amory Lovins Lays Out His Clean Energy Plan, Fraser's Penguins: A Journey to the Future in Antarctica. If they are concerned about national security, energy efficiency is probably the best way to get it. Amory Bloch Lovins … The rowing, the heavy work, will and should be done by the private sector in its co-evolution with civil society. But for people not in the energy business they are jargony, so instead of negawatts, we can say just “saved electricity.”e360: So the term negawatts actually came to you by spotting a typo?Lovins: Yes, they meant to type megawatts, but it came out negawatts, and I said: What a nice term! Regardless of the application, integrative design for radical energy efficiency starts with shedding all previous conceptions and assumptions, and instead cultivating “beginner’s mind,” Lovins explained in the lecture. It was built in Texas, not China, because, together, we were able to cut out 30 percent, or $230 million, of capital costs, while saving a lot of energy and money. Lovins claims that it’s design, not technology that can achieve incredibly energy efficiency gains. First, define the desired service. Any one or more of those motives would lead to the same actions, and for that matter the same is true, if you care about peak oil and other depletion issues.e360: Living in Colorado, I assume, you need to drive, is that right? In this intimate talk filmed at TED's offices, energy innovator Amory Lovins shows how to get the US off oil and coal by 2050, $5 trillion cheaper, with no Act of Congress, led by business for profit. February 20, 2012. Students will also get to tour Amory Lovins's famous energy efficient home in Snowmass, CO - and check out his indoor greenhouse / banana crop! On U.S. Public Lands, Can Biden Undo What Trump Has Wrought? And you’ll find in there a slate of innovative policy measures, going well beyond fee-bates, to support rather than distort the business logic that makes it very profitable to get completely off oil, led by business, at an average cost of $15 a barrel. We should be paying energy costs through our energy bills, not through our tax bills. I would predict that those not in favor will include all the incumbents, who are quite happy with the present arrangements they paid a lot of money for.e360: What are the top three things the federal government needs to do right now to get the rules right?Lovins: Well, I won’t include the utility reform I referred to earlier, which is technically called decoupling and shared savings, because that’s done by state utility commissions. Voters have chosen one, and if that’s what they get, I think it would be constructive. Or, there’s the well-known split incentive. By barrier-busting, I mean enabling people to respond to the price signals they see, and use energy in a way that saves money, by turning into a business opportunity each of the 60 or 80 well-known obstacles or market failures in buying efficiency. [You’ll find the taxonomy of those on pages 11 to 20 of our 1997 paper Climate: Making Sense and Making Money, which is in the climate publications library of rmi.org.] Overview: Transforming Land and Sea for a More Sustainable World, In Boost for Renewables, Grid-Scale Battery Storage Is on the Rise, Filthy Water: A Basic Sanitation Problem Persists in Rural America, How Non-Native Plants Are Contributing to a Global Insect Decline, How Biden Can Put the U.S. on a Path to Carbon-Free Electricity, Amid Tensions in Myanmar, An Indigenous Park of Peace Is Born, As South Africa Clings to Coal, A Struggle for the Right to Breathe. Amory Lovins on Why Energy Efficiency is the Key In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Amory Lovins, co-founder and chairman of Rocky Mountain Institute, says that world’s biggest untapped energy source is efficiency. More about Fen Montaigne →, Never miss a feature! RMI engages businesses, communities, institutions, and entrepreneurs to accelerate the adoption of market-based solutions that cost-effectively shift from fossil fuels to efficiency and renewables. If you want to know how, please go to rmi.org/Stanford.e360: What is the importance of language choice in trying to spread these ideas and their adoption?Lovins: It’s extremely important. The topic that most occupies Lovins thinking nowadays is energy efficiency. On the mainstage of VERGE 19, Joel Makower discuss energy efficiency with Amory Lovins, Cofounder and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. Amory Lovins, hero of environmentalists and adviser to Fortune 500 firms, says it's time for bold changes in energy and transportation, focusing first on efficiency… In 1976, physicist and environmental activist Armory B. Lovins published an article, “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?” in Foreign Affairs.This excerpt from his article highlights what he termed “soft energy paths”: low-tech, environmentally safe, distributed energy forms including energy efficiency and renewable energy. The first, supported by U.S. policy, promised a future of steadily increasing reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear fission, and had serious environmental risks. Most encouraging, he says, is … Those terms are unambiguous. Unlike standards, it rewards continuous innovation and improvement, and it makes more profit for the automakers. “Principally, I am talking about using our energy resources productively,” he explains. The most important way to speed it up would be to reward utilities for cutting our bills, not selling us more energy. When you go to the dealer to buy a vehicle of the size you want, there are more and less efficient models on offer. And they cause enormous distortions in private investment and consumption decisions. Amory Lovins lectures at Stanford University as the visiting MAP/MING Professor of Energy and Environment Then I took a lot of video conferencing, rather than flying. It’s a more powerful method than either fuel taxes or efficiency standards. The world’s biggest untapped energy source, according to energy expert Amory Lovins, is efficiency. For example, most gas and electric utilities are regulated very largely at the state level.e360: What would be the first concrete thing that President Obama and/or the new Congress ought to do here?Lovins: It’s not for me to say what their political priorities should be. More importantly, though, I don’t commute by car, because my trip to work is 10 meters across the jungle in the middle of my passive solar banana farm.e360: And how long has that been your situation?Lovins: Oh, let’s see. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, National Geographic, Outside, Smithsonian, and other magazines. Actually, if you look at move.rmi.org/oilendgame, you’ll find our detailed, Pentagon-co-sponsored study of four years ago, Winning the Oil Endgame. They’re very lopsided. Amory Lovins: Oh, for example, in the United States we could save at least half the oil and gas and three-quarters of the electricity we use, and that efficiency investment would cost only about an eighth [of] what we’re now paying for those forms of energy.e360: How fast could we do that?Lovins: To get completely off oil — half from the supply side and half by redoubling the efficiency of using oil — would take ’til the 2040s, if we did it about a third slower than we saved oil from 1977 to ’85, when we were last paying attention. Sign up for the E360 Newsletter →. Under a fee-bate system, the less efficient ones would pay a corresponding fee, that would then be used to pay a rebate on the more efficient ones. For four decades, Amory Lovins has been a leading proponent of a renewable power revolution that would wean the U.S. off fossil fuels and usher in an era of energy independence. I’ve saved a lot of commuting by now. Hardly lacking in confidence or ambition, Lovins — in conjunction with his colleagues at the institute — has published Reinventing Fire, his step-by-step blueprint for how to transition to a renewable energy economy by mid-century. In theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice they are not. We work in all sectors, but most of our work is with the private sector, because we actually want to get things done.e360: How far can the private sector take us, and at what point do we need to bring the general public along as well?Lovins: I think government should steer, not row. That is, the core truth of today’s energy dilemma is that whether you care about security, climate or prosperity, you should do exactly the same things about energy. Our current energy technologies are grossly inefficient and result in abundant waste, Lovins said, which threatens our resources, security, environment, health, geopolitical stance, social development and wallets. And government, Lovins says, “should steer, not row.”. In 1976, as an obscure consultant, he published an article in … What do you drive?Lovins: I drive a 2001 Honda Insight aluminum hybrid that is rated at 64 miles a gallon. Shares. Amory Lovins: Integrative design for radical end-use efficiency, in electricity and all other forms, and all sectors. As Big Energy Gains, Can Europe’s Community Renewables Compete? And I think the broad framework that makes the most sense for energy policy would be to let all ways to save or produce energy compete fairly, at honest prices, no matter which kind they are, what technology they use, how big they are, where they are, or who owns them. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he talks about his latest book, which describes his vision of how the world can attain a green energy future by 2050. But in the new facilities we save more — typically 40 to 90 percent — and the capital cost almost always goes down. And another important way to make retrofits much cheaper is to coordinate them with retrofits and renovations you’re doing anyway for other reasons. The key is integrating all four energy-using sectors—and four kinds of innovation. Lovins, who participated in Principal Voices in 2006, has advocated the "soft energy path," which promotes efficiency and renewable energy. We published an example where that coordination would enable you to save three-quarters of the electricity used by a typical 20-odd-year-old glass office tower at a slightly lower cost than the regular 20-year renovation you have to do anyway, that saves nothing.e360: Now, you mentioned that barrier-busting is needed at all levels of government. You used the word jargony, for me it sounds gimmicky.Lovins: Well, tastes differ. Sign up for the E360 Newsletter →, Amory Lovins on Why Energy Efficiency is the Key. A fee-bate is a combination of a fee and a rebate. They have a habit of producing the most efficient cars on the market in any given time. Right now, there’s over a century of encrusted and assiduously lobbied-for and defended subsidies to almost every kind of energy. The candidates had quite different energy platforms. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he talks about his latest book, which describes his vision of how the world can attain a green energy future by 2050. Using his own home in the Colorado Rocky Mountains as an example, Lovins shows how simple … e360: How do you find people respond to it?Lovins: Generally, very well. There is no trade-off or compromise required. And, of course, they are in a race with Toyota and everybody else to do that. You need to drop in a lease rider to share equitably the costs and benefits of the retrofit.e360: You do focus mainly on the business side, is that right?Lovins: Yeah. Lovins argued that the United States had arrived at an important crossroads and could take one of two paths. 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