Old Snowmass, Colorado. Amory Lovins ruminates with an amused expression. His face is lit by the soft glow of his Apple laptop as he rolls a spoon through a bowl of hot cereal and savors a large mug of morning tea. We’re in the Rocky Mountain Institute, a house he built in the mid-eighties to demonstrate that careful design could virtually eliminate energy demand.
A success, the house requires almost no space and water heating energy and has achieved a 90 percent reduction in household electrical demand. The house has also achieved an odd singularity— the world altitude record for passive solar growth of bananas. It has done all this, he points out, with technology that is now fifteen years old.
“We got a call recently from our electrical coop. They said they had not needed to send us a bill for two months. Was everything O.K.? They were worried about us but we just happened to have a lot of sunny days in June and July.”
Twenty-five years ago Mr. Lovins shocked the world by asserting there was a “soft path” solution to the energy crisis. Efficient use of energy, he declared, was a better investment than a frantic search for more oil, more gas, or squeezing oil from shale. Worse, many of the power plants that were going to be built would prove unnecessary.
Global Granola, the policy wonks responded. Lovins was quickly dismissed as a pie-in-the-sky physicist by the energy and utility establishment in spite of his compelling brilliance and stark lucidity.
Today it is clear that he was right and the energy establishment was wrong. The graph of world energy demand since the mid-seventies has followed his predicted curve for the entire period. Energy demand is far below what was predicted by policy makers and producers.
Then, and now, Mr. Lovins follows a three-word precept: “Best Buys First.” Today Lovins and his Rocky Mountain Institute have an enclopedic collection of case histories that demonstrate his thesis— efficiency is always the best investment. It’s no longer an idea; it’s a mountain of data.
So I’ve come to ask a question.
Is it possible that our response to the recent price spikes in energy— and the electric shortages in California— will set us up for a replay of the energy bust of the eighties?
“If he (George W. Bush) could get political and market approval, it could be a replay of what happened 20 years ago,” Mr. Lovins answered.
“A lot of folks will lose their shirts. …The overshoot will be worse this time because there is a new technology, distributed production— the movement of the power plant to your basement.”
He explained that developing new energy sources was a relatively slow process while redesigning for efficiency was a fast process. As a result, massive investments in new energy supplies would be put in place just in time to collide with diminishing demand and softening prices.
I asked for some examples.
“The Conde Naste building in New York. It has fuel cells and photovoltaics. It didn’t cost anymore, and it attracted premium tenants at premium rents. Smart real estate developers are starting to make this part of the package.”
“In the first six months of this year Californians cut electric peak demand by as much as it had grown in the last five to ten years. There is a caveat here, of course— we don’t know if the reduction is temporary or permanent. Ironically, this happened before the higher costs (of electricity) actually hit people’s bills. We also know that super efficient refrigerators and light bulbs were flying off the shelves at retailers. The permanent savings will only increase.”
People in California, in other words, are reducing their demand for energy about 10 times as fast as the supply side can put new sources in place. (You can check this for yourself at www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/peak_demand_reduction.html.)
“So if you’re putting hundreds of millions into a power plant that takes years to put in place but something much faster is happening to demand, you’re heading for trouble. What we learned about 30 years ago is that energy policy is about a balanced portfolio. The issue isn’t the supply of energy, it’s about the delivery of hot showers and cold beer in the cheapest way…”
Defined that way— as a service— how we approach and solve the energy problem changes completely.
Readers who want to learn more about the Rocky Mountain Institute can visit www.rmi.org
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Photo: Pixabay
(c) Scott Burns, 2022