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Profitable Solutions to Climate, Oil, and Proliferation

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Abstract

Protecting the climate is not costly but profitable (even if avoided climate change is worth zero), mainly because saving fuel costs less than buying fuel. The two biggest opportunities, both sufficiently fast, are oil and electricity. The US, for example, can eliminate its oil use by the 2040s at an average cost of $15 per barrel (2000$), half by redoubled efficiency and half by alternative supplies, and can save three-fourths of its electricity more cheaply than operating a thermal power station. Integrative design permits this by making big energy savings cheaper than small ones, turning traditionally assumed diminishing returns into empirically observed expanding returns. Such efficiency choices accelerate climate-safe, inexhaustible, and resilient energy supply—notably the “micropower” now delivering about a sixth of the world’s electricity and 90% of its new electricity. These cheap, fast, market-financeable, globally applicable options offer the most effective, yet most underestimated and overlooked, solutions for climate, proliferation, and poverty.

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Notes

  1. Lovins 2005, Sep 2005, RMI Publ. #C05-05, www.sciam.com/media/pdf/Lovinsforweb.pdf or www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/C05-05_MoreProfitLessCarbon.

  2. China raised its energy intensity a total of 2% during 2000–2005 by binging on energy-intensive basic materials industries, but looks back on track for a ~4.0% year−1 reduction during 2005–2010, intends legally binding cuts of 3.4–4.0% year−1 during 2005–2020, and just announced attainment of its 5-year industrial efficiency goal in 3 years: Seligsohn (2009).

  3. Lovins (2008a), e.g., Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner has turned an efficiency leapfrog (most importantly including a half-carbon-fiber airframe) into a breakthrough competitive strategy now starting to be emulated in the automotive sector; Wal-Mart saved 38% of its truck fleet’s l ton−1 km−1 during 2005–2008 and aims for 50% by 2015 (http://walmartstores.com/Sustainability/9071.aspx); and the Pentagon is now leading the US Government off oil to minimize the cost, in blood and treasure, of delivering fuel to the battlefield (Lovins 2010a).

  4. A Deutsche Bank study (Sankey et al. 2009) even projects world oil demand will peak around 2016, then fall by 2030 to ~40% below the consensus forecast or ~8% below current levels, due to electrification of light vehicles. However, it assumes Chinese new cars will be 26% electric in 2020 versus China’s latest target of 80%; overlooks improvements in light-vehicle physics; and ignores non-routine truck and plane improvements and other oil savings. Its startling findings may thus be conservative.

  5. Ogburn et al. (2008). This article shows 2.3- to 2.7-fold efficiency gains over the road at constant speed. Adding idle reduction, hybridization, refrigeration and further auxiliary/accessory improvements, and optimization of speed and fuel loading could achieve tripled efficiency without the superefficient digital engines now emerging.

  6. Lovins et al. (2004), pp. 68–73 (see also pp. 62–63).

  7. Fiberforge Corporation (www.fiberforge.com), Glenwood Springs, CO, USA. (Disclosure: the author is a Director, Chairman Emeritus, and small shareholder of this firm.).

  8. The IDEA from Bright Automotive (www.brightautomotive.com), Anderson, IN, USA. (Disclosure: this firm, like Fiberforge, was spun off from the author’s nonprofit employer, Rocky Mountain Institute, which maintains a small shareholding in both firms.)

  9. See Rocky Mountain Institute’s 2008 Smart Garage Charrette publications at http://move.rmi.org/innovation-workshop-category/smart-garage.html. A fully electrified light-duty-vehicle fleet in the US or most other industrialized countries could have an order of magnitude more peak electric output capacity when parked (~96% of the time) than all electricity generating companies now own.

  10. Oil is not mentioned here because <5% of the world’s electricity is made from oil and <5% of the world’s oil makes electricity—largely, in both cases, gooey “residual” oil unsuited to making distillate products. In industrial countries like the US, the overlap is only 1–2% and shrinking.

  11. Competitek 1986–1992. Largely summarized by E source (Boulder, CO), Technology Atlas series, 1992–. www.esource.com.

  12. Five detailed technical lectures summarize the basic concepts, practice, and implications: Lovins (2007).

  13. Lovins (2004), to be updated at www.rmi.org to reflect 2007–2009 renovations and 2010 measurements.

  14. Lovins (1995). This house’s and other technical sub-reports of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s ACT2 Project (www.pge.com/mybusiness/edusafety/training/pec/inforesource/act2proj.shtml) are linked to the right-sidebar ACT2 line at www.pge.com/pec/resourcecenter/.

  15. Lovins 2008b (see three slides near the middle).

  16. The building is described at http://dge.stanford.edu/about/building/.

  17. Lovins (1995), June 1995, RMI Publ. #E95-28, www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E95-28_SuperEfficientPassiveBuilding.

  18. RMI’s previous design, for the recently opened Texas Instruments fab (www.ti.com/corp/docs/rennerroadfab/gdoverview.shtml), saved only 20% of its energy (plus 35% of water) because the two biggest recommendations could not be tested in time for the design deadline, but its 35% capital-cost saving let it be built in Texas, not China.

  19. Described at www.10xE.org. The project needs outstanding cases, teachers, and practitioners; seconded engineers; beta-test sites for draft cases; and money.

  20. Data from the leading source, New Energy Finance (London), are summarized annually at www.ren21.net, most recently in www.ren21.net/pdf/RE_GSR_2009_update.pdf.

  21. Rocky Mountain Institute maintains a detailed global database of micropower capacity and output, compiled from standard industry and government sources, at www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E05-04_MicropowerDatabase.

  22. Lovins (2009). See also Lovins et al. (2008), Lovins (2010b) and Rocky Mountain Institute’s forthcoming 2010–2011 publications on the theme of Reinventing Fire.

  23. Lovins (2010b). A 2008 preliminary draft is posted by kind permission at www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E08-01_NuclearIllusion.

  24. In the US states (chiefly southeastern) where it is especially powerful, the nuclear industry insists on, and often gets, new state laws that bar or restrict competition by alternatives and make customers pay for new nuclear plants in advance—whether they ever run or not, whatever they cost, no questions asked—plus a return to compensate utilities for the risks they just shed. This approach scraps all four bedrock principles of utility regulation—payment on delivery, only for “used and useful” assets, only if prudently bought, with no Commission able to bind its successors. It also creates in utility investment the same moral hazard that just brought down the US financial system. Curiously, and analogously to recent shifts in nuclear politics in Europe, these changes are most strongly pushed by political conservatives.

  25. A.J. Gadgil et al. (1991) cites ratios somewhat below current estimates.

  26. Lovins et al. (1980a, b), Lovins (2010c).

  27. Lovins and Lovins 1981/1982. Reposted by RMI 2001 in OCR .PDF version at www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/S82-03_BrittlePowerEnergyStrategy. The design principles of resilience, synthesized in Chapter 13, can be summarized: “An inherently resilient system should include many relatively small, fine-grained elements, dispersed in space, each having a low cost of failure. These substitutable components should be richly interconnected by short, redundant links…. Failed components or links should be promptly detected, isolated, and repaired. Components need to be so organized that each element can interconnect with the rest at will but stand alone at need, and that each successive level of function is little affected by failures or substitutions at a subordinate level. Systems should be designed so that any failures are slow and graceful. Components, finally, should be understandable, maintainable, reproducible at a variety of scales, capable of rapid evolution, and societally compatible.”

  28. E.g., via 6–16% higher labor productivity in offices with better thermal, visual, and acoustic comfort and better air quality; ~40% higher retail sales pressure in well-daylit shops; ~20–26% faster learning in well-daylit schools; higher quality and throughput in efficient factories; and faster healing, less pain, and less readmission in green and efficient hospitals.

  29. Nuclear subsidies tend to be larger than renewable subsidies in percentage terms. Many of the most useful and dispassionate comparisons are compiled by Doug Koplow, www.earthtrack.net.

  30. Lovins and Lovins 1997, RMI Publ. #C97-13, www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/C97-13_ClimateSenseMoney, especially pp. 11–20.

  31. See Lovins et al. (2002), Part 3.

  32. An English-language source of modern 87% efficient models is www.cronspisen.eu/gb/kakelugnar/; some makers claim efficiencies around 90+%.

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Correspondence to Amory B. Lovins.

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Presentation at 15 June 2009 to 9th Royal Colloquium “Climate Action: Tuning in on energy, water and food security,” Bönhamn, Sweden.

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Lovins, A.B. Profitable Solutions to Climate, Oil, and Proliferation. AMBIO 39, 236–248 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-010-0031-6

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