I think it is important to get the result, not to get it for the reason you want. 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. Students will also get to tour Amory Lovins's famous energy efficient home in Snowmass, CO - and check out his indoor greenhouse / banana crop! What do you drive?Lovins: I drive a 2001 Honda Insight aluminum hybrid that is rated at 64 miles a gallon. They’re very lopsided. Voters have chosen one, and if that’s what they get, I think it would be constructive. 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. 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. You have to speak to people’s concerns in their language.e360: How do we get people to focus on these issues right now, given everything else that’s going on in the country and the world?Lovins: By speaking to their concerns in their language. Last Thursday I spent a half hour onstage in San Francisco discussing energy trends and choices with the energy analyst Amory B. Lovins and green business maven Joel Makower. 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. Those terms are unambiguous. LONDON, England (CNN)-- Amory Lovins is an environmentalist and the chairman and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI). And let’s see who’s not in favor of that. The most important way to speed it up would be to reward utilities for cutting our bills, not selling us more energy. 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. Our next fab design after that, by the way, will save about two-thirds of the energy and half the capital costs. And if that happened, that would be the most single powerful lever in getting utilities excited and engaged in efficiency, rather than averse or at least indifferent to it because it hurts their profits.Second, to get efficient cars on the road quickly, the federal government should incubate at a state and regional level and then take nationwide a system of size-neutral and revenue-neutral “fee-bates”. 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. 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. In 1976, as an obscure consultant, he published an article in … But don’t call it “conservation.”In an interview conducted by science writer Carole Bass for Yale Environment 360, Lovins, the co-founder and chairman of Rocky Mountain Institute, says that word connotes “privation, discomfort and curtailment.” By contrast, “efficiency” means “doing more and better with less energy and money, but with more brains and technology,” he says.The longtime renewable energy advocate and author says retooling for energy efficiency will require “barrier-busting” at many levels. If they are concerned about national security, energy efficiency is probably the best way to get it. Forest Defenders: A Panamanian Tribe Regains Control of Its Lands, As World’s Deltas Sink, Rising Seas Are Far from Only Culprit. 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. Amory Lovins: energy visionary sees renewables revolution in full swing. "Engaging, intense, informative, exhausting at times, wonderful, completely worthwhile" -Student, 2020. Who should apply? 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. Similarly, if you look at our economist book six years ago, Small is Profitable — that’s smallisprofitable.org — you’ll find a pretty complete agenda for reforming the electricity system to let big and small technologies compete fairly, with huge advantage to the public.e360: Can you give us a couple of real-life success stories that you’ve experienced in the private sector?Lovins: A well-known one, with Texas Instruments, was their new chip-fab — that is, a microchip-making plant — in Richardson, Texas. 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. The car has, I think, 3,000 miles a year, most of which is driving to and from the airport. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, National Geographic, Outside, Smithsonian, and other magazines. And they cause enormous distortions in private investment and consumption decisions. And government, Lovins says, “should steer, not row.”Yale Environment 360: You have called energy efficiency “the largest, cheapest, safest, cleanest, fastest way to provide energy services.” How do you quantify that claim? Or, there’s the well-known split incentive. 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. On the mainstage of VERGE 19, Joel Makower discuss energy efficiency with Amory Lovins, Cofounder and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. [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.] Amory Lovins is one of the country's foremost leaders in renewable energy and energy efficiency. ... We can see a very clear way forward to trebling energy efficiency by 2050." 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. 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. Amory Lovins Lays Out His Clean Energy Plan, Fraser's Penguins: A Journey to the Future in Antarctica. 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 … You used the word jargony, for me it sounds gimmicky.Lovins: Well, tastes differ. 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. Amory B. Lovins, an American consultant experimental physicist and 1993 MacArthur Fellow, has been active at the nexus of energy, resources, economy, environment, development, and security in more than 50 countries for over 40 years, including 14 years based in England. 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. 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. The Plowboy Interviews spotlights Amory Lovins, energy Analyst and environmentalist and author of the 1976 essay, "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?" Forest Defenders: A Panamanian Tribe Regains Control of Its Lands, As World’s Deltas Sink, Rising Seas Are Far from Only Culprit. Then I took a lot of video conferencing, rather than flying. Power Q&A: Amory Lovins The energy-efficiency guru who cofounded the Rocky Mountain Institute advocates feebates, negawatts, and letting the little guys play. 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