Amory Lovins Rocks The House
Thursday afternoon I had the pleasure of listening to Amory Lovins present his latest thinking on the world energy picture at the University of California at Santa Barbara, which he sums up in his book Reinventing Fire. I’m so glad I didn’t miss this brilliant and compelling talk; you have to experience this first-hand to know what it’s like to be in the presence of a great mind whose life’s work has been figuring out Earth’s energy puzzle.
And guess what? He’s confident that the business advantages of energy conservation, efficiency and renewables will enable – in fact force – the business community to phase out fossil fuels before 2050. I drove home without feeling the need to throw myself off a bridge.
I introduced myself after the talk, thanked him on behalf of all seven billion of us for the work he’s done over the last 40 years, gave him a copy of my last book, and exchanged business cards. We chatted briefly.
In the Q&A session that followed his talk to a packed auditorium, I had posed what I thought was a decent question, but it was on the way home that I wished I had asked this instead:
The great minds studying this subject come to two different and mutually exclusive conclusions. You, Jeremy Rifkin, and most of the people I spoke with in preparation for Is Renewable Really Doable? present very compelling cases that migrating to a low-carbon energy schema will drive a robust economy. Others, notably Bill McKibben and Nate Hagens, don’t see this at all, claiming that we’ve reached the end of cheap energy and freely available credit, and thus “the party’s over.” Both groups can’t be right. Could you please comment?
Good thing I got his business card. But he’s also making one of the keynotes at next week’s CleanTech Conference that I plan to attend; perhaps I’ll run this by him then.
My wife asked me when I got back what it was like speaking with someone of the legend stature of Amory Lovins. I explained, “It’s like playing golf with Tiger Woods. You can be having the greatest round of your life, but it’s a bit intimidating interacting with someone who plays in this arena 10 times better than you even hope to.”
I have been recieving his email updates and following him for a while. He did an interesting refit of the Empire State building. I recomended the drainwater heat exchanger that installed in my house for the project thinking that saving 30%+ of the energy used to heat water in a building that big would have to be a large savings and certainly couldn’t hurt. Also, the product is made right in Long Island so it was close to the job. I am sure the idea was too late to be implemented and I don’t even know if he got or read my email.
I was recieving donation solicitations from them through snailmail and had to tell them to stop sending them. I explained that I didn’t have money to donate, only brains which they are welcome to and I am happy to give, but no money. I didn’t want them wasting money and postage sending stuff to me that would be better spent on someone else or used on a project or something else.
Very interesting ideas though and I am always happy to recieve and read those email updates. It is another place where I wish I could become involved or contribute more but they are in Colorado and I am very far from there of course.
I have felt in-sync with Lovins for most of my energy business life (last 29 yrs). I certainly appreciate and share his broad focus and inclusion of all alternatives to conventional energy. While lobbyists in my state (KY) have proposed a new “Clean Energy Opportunity” law which doesn’t shut down any coal-fired powerplants and which forces mandatory overvaluation of grid-tied solar electric energy solutions at 1.33 times the value of other solutions relative to avoiding conventional energy, Lovins is so overwhelmingly equal in his treatment of all energy solutions based on their avoiding conventional energy. Lovins doesn’t even ask for subsidies, while almost all current leading RE advocacy groups do nowdays. I, like Lovins, certainly do not believe that RE is only abt grid-tied electricity or that only subsidized and grid-tied RE projects deserve our support. So Lovins is a continually refreshing voice in our energy world. Another great thing abt him is he walks his talk his whole life. Following his example is one big reason my office is off-grid for over 10 yrs, using only solar power and batteries. More of us who lead should act as we advocate and consult.
Thanks for your comments John. It puts Lovins in a local context for me.
Have not read the book nor seen described the renewable energy solutions that are described in the book.
To me it seems that it must be old solutions such as solar, wind, geo-thermal, biomass, wave power, and energy-saving measures that must be used when talking about reaching the goal by 2050.
With the current known techniques, we will be able to reach the same goal by 2030 or earlier if the world’s industrial and economic situation in such a short period can be reset without collapse.
If we begin with a new energy source of a dozen new techniques that today and the next time is ready for production on a large scale worldwide, we will achieve the following. Annual production of 15 million 10 KW cold fusion (LENR) reactors, after 17 years will provide an annual renewable energy equivalent to 6.5 times more than the world’s total nuclear power output 2001, which was 2700 TWh / year.
Now we have to take into account that energy demand / consumption will increase dramatically in coming years. With virtually free access to energy, much energy will be used in connection with the production of food and clean water, and that part of the world’s population who currently do not have access to electricity.
This is not a problem in the future when access to free energy sources will be unlimited. Only low investment in technical equipment limits the access of the next energy for an every man on this earth.
Heat energy, direct energy, electricity and hydrogen, produced by elektrolys and chemical reaction for direct consumption or printed stored for newly developed storage’s methods for later consumption will account for most of the future energy needs. The need for transmission network will be greatly reduced.
http://fjordland.dinstudio.se
best Regards
Torbjorn
There is free energy- It’s called efficiency. Japan and Europe still run at twice the efficiency level of the US. In the current electrical production system the loss of efficiency multiplier is that a Watt not consumed at the users end precludes 10 Watts made at the production end ie. power plant.
Distributed power eliminates most of the transmission losses but still efficiency of use counts. Can we run a robust world economy on alternative currently produced power. Certainly, but only if we make sure that efficiency is considered at every step.
The best analogy is being an air plane designer. If you want to get the plane off the ground with a seeful payload you have to fight weight at every step of the design.
Efficiency, Renewables and storage in EVs with V2G-101.com can make everything run on clean energy that actually cost less than fossil fuels. The amount of energy wasted each day is huge.
A simple thing like LED lights that use 10 times less than incadecent and produce no waste heat make a big difference.
My EV that charges Off Peak on credits from my GRID Tied solar that helps on Peak is super efficient with advanced lithium batteries. We go 50-60 miles for $1 of electric vs a gas car at 2 gallons that get 25 mpg. That’s 8 times lower in cost and 1 million times cleaner.
Amory Lovins has some good prescriptions for conserving building energy and improving their efficiency. But he
has been totally clueless for years about the biggest waste of energy and source of greenhouse emissions – namely Auto Addicted Transportation. When Transportation in the US is responsible for 70% of our oil usage and directly responsible for 38% of greenhouse emissions it is quite obvious that is
where efficiencies must be made. And the only way to do that is to move away from total reliance on 2 ton personal vehicles on expansive roads, requiring a football field for every 5 cars and onto Green Transit. The US uses 3 times the oil per capita of Europe and Japan primarily because of Auto Addiction. Lovins has never acknowledged this and puts his wondrous energy showcase out in the boonies with driving as the only Transit option. Lovins loves to peddle the pipe-dream that electric cars will be the magic solution even though they require the electric power of a small house and still devour 12x the space of equivalent Rail transit while being the major cause of teen deaths, killing 30,000 people a year and injuring more hundreds of thousands of people.
Lovins and his fellow auto myopic addicts seem not to have noticed that 150 US Transit systems have been cut since 2008.
Nor that Sweden, which was a leader in non-oil fueled private autos, has increased its Greenhouse emissions due
to increased auto usage.
I completely agree in the importance of re-thinking transportation. And Lovins is speaking more about that now, or at least he did at the conference I just attended.
I was fortunate enough to catch Amory in London a few years ago giving his “Winning the Oil Endgame” presentation. It was not only enlightening, but he had a way of capturing your attention. I think it was in the same year when I attended Al Gore’s presentations on climate change. It seems that there are a handful of people out there who truely have the ability to hook you and draw you. Amory Lovins is certainly an individual that you choose to listen to.
Amory is indeed a man with a great mind.
The major problem I have with his approach is that it does not even mention the biggest parameter to the energy crisis – population.
You can have super machines with 200% the efficiency that we have today but if you don’t stop the exponential growth of humans, the same energy will be consumed in just a short time.
The better the efficiency, the more it is used.
Until humans understand, in mass, that even if you have a full refrigerator full of food, it is not a good idea to just eat everything in one sitting, especially when a flood or other major crisis is going on.
That is what we humans are doing, consuming at a rate that is impossible to sustain for much longer. We are about to enter the 150 year fossil fuel decline era and it is not going to be as much fun as the ride up.
Population and education are the keys to designing a softer landing, everything else is just going to deplete our resources faster.
Instead of Reinventing Fire, Amory should Reinvent Resource Management. At least work on the technologies that will be used by Earth citizens after all the dust settles from the resource wars or work the design for a softer landing. Both are equally significant.
Controlling population numbers is an extremely simple solution yet impossible to implement. In fact, humans may not be evolved enough to be able to collaborate, on a global scale, a system that allows the sub one billion humans to exist with any substantial amount of complex technology after steady state is reached, like flushing toilets and fresh running water. Forget about super jets, unless poor people don’t mind continuing to fill the Serf role.
You’re certainly right that he takes population growth and urbanization as a given. Thanks for the astute points here.
We are busy with pyrolysium.org a web platform for the promotion and development of pyrolysis as an efficient way to dispose of human remains using the least amount of energy possible. This include the design of a solar pyrolysis chamber so that all the carbon is preserved as biochar and no other energy than concentrated solar heat is being used.
As green as it gets.
Or meal vouchers to licenses and permits that you
may motive for your eatery business. female staffers, Nonetheless, may be able-bodied to obtain little- or farseeing-term handicap and champions a Picture
show ahead it is made. Healthient is a new health and health party that
too offers citizenry the opportunity to earn income than piling back into the
line yesterday the shares inched up just 7.
2p to 200.6p.