Power Q&A: Amory Lovins
NEWS: The energy-efficiency guru who cofounded the Rocky Mountain Institute advocates feebates, negawatts, and letting the little guys play.
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Mother Jones: What will it take for renewables to go mainstream?
Amory Lovins: They already have in many places. The U.S. lags badly; only 4 percent of our power comes from micropower—cogeneration, wind, sun, small hydro, geothermal, biomass, and waste fuel. The reason the U.S. lags so badly is that we have obsolete rules that favor big over small, supply over efficiency, and incumbents over new market entrants. It's the very opposite of a competitive market. So a good dose of conservative economic principles would get us even further than trying to give technologies we like subsidies as big as the ones we don't like are already getting. Of course, desubsidizing the whole energy sector would be a wonderful advance. Remember, the subsidies that renewables get are an attempt to catch up with much larger and ever-increasing subsidies that fossil and nuclear already enjoy. And those are permanent, whereas the renewable ones tend to be temporary, doled out a year or two at a time. The U.S. wind industry has been crashed at least three times, quite deliberately, by Congress messing with the tax credits from year to year and in a stop-and-go fashion. You can't run an industry that way and develop the capacity and the jobs. That's why we import most of our wind turbines.
MJ: So if you were king, what would you do to make renewables take off?
AL: Level the playing field, but also let them in. There are many obstacles in most parts of the country to being allowed to hook up generators. Many utilities will pay you an unfairly low price or require high standby charges or require onerous and unnecessary engineering studies and fancy switchgear not required by the relevant standards, so these are simply barriers to competition. The barriers that renewables and efficiency face come less from our living in a capitalist market economy and more from not taking market economics seriously, not following our own principles.
MJ: What energy policies should the next president try to enact right away?
AL: I think the important policies need to happen at a state rather than a federal level. With modest exceptions, our federal energy policy is really a large trough arranged by the hogs for their convenience.
MJ: So how could Washington best cut fuel consumption?
AL: Let me give you one for electricity and one for oil, because they are each two-fifths of the CO2 problem. For electricity, we decouple utilities' profits from sales so they will no longer be rewarded for selling more energy or penalized for selling less, and if they do something smart to cut our bill, we let them keep a small part, maybe a 10th of the savings, as extra profit—so we, and they, are both incentivized. This has been tried in a couple of states very successfully. For cars, the most effective thing would be a “feebate”: In the showroom, less-efficient models would have a corresponding fee, while the more-efficient ones would get a rebate paid for by the fees. That way when choosing what model you want you would pay attention to fuel savings over its whole life, not just the first year or two. It turns out that the automakers can actually make more money this way because they will want to get their cars from the fee zone into the rebate zone by putting in more technology. The technology has a higher profit margin than the rest of the vehicle.
MJ: What's the most promising new energy source?
AL: The first 10 or so on my list are ways to wring far more work out of the energy that we already have much more cheaply than buying it. Typically, if we do that right in our buildings, vehicles, and factories, the capital cost will be comparable to today's or even lower.
MJ: And in terms of supply?
AL: Micropower is now providing about one-third of the world's new electric capacity. To give you an idea of how fast this revolution is going, in 2006 distributed renewables alone got $56 billion of private risk capital while nuclear as usual got zero—it's only bought by central planners. Nuclear added less capacity than photovoltaics and a 10th of what wind power added. Even in China, which has ambitious nuclear goals, they already have seven times as much distributed renewable as nuclear capacity, and it's growing seven times faster.
MJ: Then I suppose you consider nuclear the most overhyped energy source?
AL: Clearly. It's unable to find private investment despite federal subsidies now approaching or even exceeding its total costs.
MJ: If you had $1 million to invest in the energy sector, where would you put it?
AL: Efficient use. I want to do the cheapest things first to get the most climate protection and other benefits per dollar. Buying micropower and “negawatts” [Lovins' term for efficiency measures] instead of nuclear gives you about 2 to 11 times more carbon reduction per dollar, and you get it much faster.
MJ: Would you rather live next to a nuclear plant or a coal-burning plant?
AL: Neither. They are both uneconomic and unnecessary. This is like a stupid multiple-choice-test question: Would you prefer to die of climate change or oil wars or nuclear holocaust? The right answer is none of the above. Because all three of those problems—climate change, oil dependence, and the spread of nuclear weapons—go away if we just use energy in a way that saves money, and since that transition is not costly but profitable, it can actually be led by business, and in its coevolution with civil society is the most dynamic force we have.
MJ: I know you're big on energy savings in your own house. What is your personal favorite?
AL: The R19 window I just installed. It looks like two sheets of glass, costs less than three, but insulates like 19. By using expensive windows, I was able to save even more capital up front by eliminating the heating system.
MJ: Do you have any energy-use guilty pleasures?
AL: I take long showers, but they are 99 percent solar, so I guess it's not really guilty.
Michael Mechanic is a senior editor at Mother Jones.
Illustration: Otto Steininger
While it is technically possible to separate plutonium 239 (the fissionable isotope from which a nuclear weapon can be made) from used nuclear power plant fuel, the United States and all other Western countries have never done that. There are far more efficient means to produce plutonium 239 and that is done in government owned facilities. Commercial nuclear power is now actually doing the reverse. Decommissioned nuclear weapons material from both the U.S. and Russia is being converted to fuel for nuclear power reactors.
Furthermore, it must be understood that no commercial power reactor contains fuel that will explode. It is just physically impossible.
Nuclear weapons are a frightening and devastating means to kill and destroy that we all wish would disappear forever. However, misleading statements tying nuclear weaponry to nuclear power is deceitful, erroneous, and pandering to peoples’ fears in order to gain support.
“The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”
The American scientific establishment has failed to protect humanity ever since WWII because as Freeman Dyson said: “The failure of science to produce benefits for the poor in recent decades is due to two factors working in combination: the pure scientist have become more detached from the mundane needs of humanity, and the applied scientists have become more attached to immediate profitability.”
The worst-case scenario proof of Dyson’s statement is Berkeley’s continued production of humanity destroying Hydrogen Bombs for profit and their latest “alliance” with BP oil “hogs” for $500 Million. The fact is that even Edward Teller dreamed of Controlled Fusion power plants to produce enough power to meet the needs of the entire human race by the end of the 20th century, but even he was overruled by the Powers That Be who still choose to work for the “hogs”.
Sadly, even Amory Lovins is one of the “hogs” that he needs to point his finger at. The Rocky Mountain Institute is just one more example of our failures to heed the warnings of President Eisenhower, Freeman Dyson, E.O. Wilson and many others over the last half-century. The truth is that research institutes make a great deal of money off stabilization wedges that are all well and good but not nearly enough, fast enough to prevent tipping points from continuing to topple.
At the rate we are failing today, where we have failed to discover and implement large-scale solutions to our growing century year old global warming problem, our only solution will be to dig very large and deep caves to survive in until the next ice age if the escalating warnings by the world scientific community are truly correct.
It’s time to “fight like hell for the living” at this point during the evolution of our new era of global warming. Either we immediately embark on a Manhattan Project magnitude effort to build large-scale generation plants that eliminate carbon dioxide producing generation plants or quality of life on earth will degenerate to a state where social chaos will be our biggest problem.
Mr. Lovins absolutely ties commercial nuclear power to nuclear proliferation in this article as well as other public forums - “Lovins sees the biggest benefit from the death of nuclear as making it easier to stop nuclear proliferation since suspect nations could no longer claim they were just making electricity.” http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0607-nuclear_debate.html
Basing our national energy policy on what other countries may or may not do is foolish.
If you read enough of Mr. Lovin’s public comments, you will see that his political leanings drive his energy ideas…and that is fine. However, his logic for using “micropower” and “negawatts” to replace the need for base load generation does not add up, especially for the vast majority of citizens and businesses that want and need power on demand.
As far as reducing Green House Gases (CHG), one can compare various generation sources by analyzing their entire cycle from beginning to end, or as some call it, “indirect and direct” CHG generation sources. However, this must be done on a per unit basis, i.e., per kilowatt-hour of production for each source.
A United Nations organization recently completed this research and analysis. Read the facts and draw your own conclusions on which generation sources are in fact, the cleanest.
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Ma gazines/Bulletin/Bull422/article4.pdf
I look forward to your questions and/or feedback.
Barry
Number one, it seems that we must focus on the needs of the world as environmental conditions and source options exist today.
The most important reality facing us today is that we are simply running out of time to prevent devastating tipping points from occurring much faster than we are implementing stabilization wedge solutions.
And we must not overlook the potential for out of control worldwide social and economic chaos in the meantime.
Like it or not, we can continue to argue until we lose total control over our environment or accept the number one fact of life today that nuclear generation is our best immediately available large scale solution to meet the worldwide imperative to control greenhouse gas emissions, and to maintain social and economic stability.
p.s. reducing co2 (which rises as a PRODUCT of warm weather, not a CAUSE of it) would kill off our plants and trees (which they require), thereby leading to no more oxygen for us (which they produce). you guys are complete, and very dangerous, idiots.
Please check out the may sources explaining the direct tax credits provided wind and solar generation construction. If the free market were really at work, very few of these projects would be built. Notice the disclaimer provided by Arizona Public Service on their website FAQs describing a 250 megawatt solar generating station... "Like all renewable projects currently under development, successful completion is contingent upon a number of factors, including the extension of the federal renewable energy tax credit, Arizona Corporation Commission approval, and successful siting and permitting."
I have been using the very accurate numbers provided by the Energy Information Agency... www.eia.gov ...
and have in fact been emailing their analysts to validate data and conclusions.
Without state and federal tax credits, alternate energy generators would be a very lousy investment. Why?
First, their construction cost per kilowatt is about the same or more than nuclear power. However, a nuclear power plant produces power 24/7 365 days/year, a real benefit both economically and pragmatically to its customers.
Wind and solar do not provide this economic and customer centered focus. In fact, according to EIA data by state and averaged for the entire US, wind generators produce only 25% of the time over a year. That means you would have to build four times the number of wind mills to equal one nuclear power plant...only when the wind blows. And imagine how many square miles of land surface must be covered with wind mills to to generate 1700 megawatts, which one nuclear power plant can produce on about 60 acres of land?
The EIA provides a graphic showing each part of the country's potential for wind generation... and it ain't that great. Solar is even "worse" when it comes to geography and generation costs per kilowatt.
So you have a few options:
1. Generate baseload power via burning coal
2. Generate baseload power via burning natural gas
3. Generate baseload power via nuclear power
4. Accept rolling blackouts based upon weather conditions
And yes, I am a conservative. Here is what I have found after 50 years of observation regarding liberals and conservatives... typically liberals make decisions based upon feelings and conservatives make decisions based upon logic.
Both decision models are valid, and when applied appropriately, one is superior to the other. For example, your well behaved, respectful daughter breaks curfew one time by ten minutes. Do you throw her in the Curfew Jailhouse... rule are rules!! Or do you say "That's understandable, Dear, I know how it feels to be with your friends and time flies by."
When it comes to national energy policy however, facts and logic are the superior decision bases. Let's apply facts and use common sense, the bywords of a logic based person like myself...and most conservatives.