barrier-busting

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Amory Lovins On Declining Gas Prices

November 14, 2008 in business benefits, energy efficiency, jobs, policy by nils | Add your comment

There's a lot of energy to be saved in all sectors

There is lots of opportunity to reduce energy intensity throughout the U.S. economy

In "a few policies to hedge against crashing oil prices," the latest post on the Rocky Mountain Institute's "Environmental Lovin's" blog, Amory Lovins himself provides some suggestions on how to keep making progress on energy independence despite the recent dip in oil prices. Of course, efficiency is the star of the show:

We now have techniques to save half our oil and gas, and three-quarters of our electricity, at about an eighth of their price. Energy efficiency remains one of the highest-return and lowest-risk investments in the entire economy.

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How is it profitable?

August 7, 2008 in Uncategorized by nils | Add your comment

The simple fact is that, when done using integrative design, energy efficiency and changing over to greener sources of energy is profitable. As Amory Lovins says, efficiency and renewables suffer from the same problem the Hubble Space Telescope did - a "sign error." Everyone thought it would cost more to be efficient and to save energy, but in fact it costs less.

For example:

  • Implementing your office building's HVAC system in the most efficient manner (not the way we're taught to do it in trade school) results not only in significant energy savings, but also in significant productivity improvements - your top line benefits as well as your bottom line.
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What is “Integrative Design?”

August 7, 2008 in Uncategorized by nils | 1 comment

"Integrative design" is another name for "whole system design." The key concept is that optimizing each component of a system independently leads to non-optimal complete systems, especially when energy efficiency becomes a goal.

Consider a very simple example. Assume you are designing a pumping system that consists of a pump and a pipe. The normal approach to designing this system would be to determine how big a pipe to install based on how much liquid you have to pump, given a certain "acceptable" amount of friction in the pipe. The bigger the pipe, the more expensive it is, so you don't want to get it too big. Once the pipe is sized, you then size the pump. but this approach turns out to only optimize the pipe.

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About Keeping The Lights On

August 7, 2008 in Uncategorized by admin | 1 comment

Keeping The Lights On is devoted to news, opinion, and information about "busting barriers" to profitable applications of energy efficiency and alternative renewable energy sources. The barriers to using energy more efficiently arise in several ways:

  • Conflicting incentives result in short-term decisions that have significant long-term costs
  • "Traditional" design practices that optimize subsystems instead of whole systems
  • The assumption saving energy is costly and not profitable
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