You often hear that fossil fuels are phasing out, and solar and wind power can’t produce enough electricity to meet the demand in coming decades, so some advocate the use of nuclear energy to fill the gap.
But that’s not the thinking of Amory Lovins, the 76-year-old co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute in western Colorado. Lovins recently said, “If we do the right things, we’ll look back and ask each other, ‘What was all the fuss about?’” Lovins became famous in the 1970s after his research told him that building more polluting coal-fired power plants was a destructive mistake. His solution then was greater efficiency and reliance on renewables, and he insists they are still the answer.
“Though it’s invisible, efficiency will cut 50% of energy use and up to 80% if we do the right things,” Lovins says. “Most of the energy we use is wasted, which makes it much cheaper to save it, rather than buy it or burn it.”
To prove it decades ago, he built a passive solar, super-insulated house at 7,100 feet of elevation in Old Snowmass. It never had a heating system, though winters regularly recorded 40 degrees below-zero temperatures. The house features banana and papaya trees growing in natural light around a koi pond.
Lovins claims there are three major ways to find more energy in what we already do. Tops on the list is changing how we build and retrofit existing structures because buildings consume 75% of the electricity we buy. Most energy jobs in the United States are already increasing efficiency, ranging from upgrading windows and other retrofits, far outpacing the shrinking fossil fuels industry.
His second way is demand-response, which he calls flexiwatts. An example is cycling air conditioners off for 15-30 minutes at a time, a barely noticeable adjustment that cuts demand for peaker-power plants, those big emitters of greenhouse gases.
His third way is using renewables more effectively. Diversifying renewables by location and type within a region evens gaps from windless and cloudy weather.
As for electric cars being a drain on the grid, they will prove to be sources of electricity, he said, as the next generation batteries will be cheaper and likely have double the storage. Daytime solar stored in vehicles will be bi-directional, spooling out power during peak evening demand.
Lovins is quick to admit that an energy gap remains, but he predicts a single-digit gap — 6% — between what renewables produce and what’s needed. That, he said, can be made up by stored, green hydrogen or ammonia, manufactured from water and air with solar energy, and burned in existing gas plants.
As for nuclear power plants, Lovins said even the best-case scenarios for the next generation of nuclear generators are at least a decade away, and at least eight times more costly than renewables today. “It’s better to use fast, cheap and certain rather than slow, costly and speculative,” he said.
Though cutting loose from fossil fuels is a massive undertaking, Lovins said America is on track. “We are on or ahead of schedule on renewables, with 85% of net new additions to the grid from renewables, and $1 billion invested in solar in the United States daily.” For these reasons and more, Lovins sees our energy future as more of what we’re already doing — only smarter and faster.
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