Adam's Apple
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- Apr 25, 2004
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Can the U.S. Stop Using Oil by 2050?
By Scott Burns for Money Central
April 8, 2005
Yes, says visionary Amory Lovins. So long as we get serious about improving energy efficiency. The cost? $180 billion over 10 years.
Nearly 30 years ago Amory Lovins took on the utility industry. The industry was predicting a high-energy future filled with nuclear power plants. Lovins called the utility forecasts "the hard path" because they committed us to producing ever more energy. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Lovins suggested an alternative, "Soft Energy Paths."
Lovins pointed out that the least expensive, safest and most secure energy we could acquire wouldn't come from more drilling and more nuclear power plants. It would come from using energy more efficiently. Rather than the hard work of raising the bridge, he suggested the easier work of lowering the water. All we had to do was to make cars, trucks, houses and buildings more energy efficient. That, he wrote, would eliminate the need to build more nuclear power plants and to search the planet for new sources of hydrocarbons.
Lovins -- ridiculed as a dreamer at the time -- was right. The conventional wisdom was wrong. Energy efficiency in the next decade reduced our oil consumption so fast, it broke the pricing power of OPEC and crushed oil prices.
Now, working with a team from his Rocky Mountain Institute and with the support of the Department of Defense, Lovins has a bolder idea: Apply energy efficiency to end our dependence on oil. Not just foreign oil, mind you, all oil. In the process, we can revolutionize (and save) our automobile industry, create a million jobs, strengthen our economy, end the flow of oil money that funds terrorism and win enduring national security.
In "Winning the Oil Endgame," Lovins shows us the path to reduce our oil consumption. How much? How fast? Think about these figures:
We could reduce the amount we import from the Persian Gulf by 2015.
We could use less oil by 2025 than we used in 1970.
We could import no oil at all by 2040.
We could use no oil at all by 2050. More impressive, much of this can be done simply by getting back on the efficiency-improvement path we were on when we responded to the first and second OPEC oil price shocks in 1973 and 1979.
for full article
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P113797.asp?GT1-6359
By Scott Burns for Money Central
April 8, 2005
Yes, says visionary Amory Lovins. So long as we get serious about improving energy efficiency. The cost? $180 billion over 10 years.
Nearly 30 years ago Amory Lovins took on the utility industry. The industry was predicting a high-energy future filled with nuclear power plants. Lovins called the utility forecasts "the hard path" because they committed us to producing ever more energy. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Lovins suggested an alternative, "Soft Energy Paths."
Lovins pointed out that the least expensive, safest and most secure energy we could acquire wouldn't come from more drilling and more nuclear power plants. It would come from using energy more efficiently. Rather than the hard work of raising the bridge, he suggested the easier work of lowering the water. All we had to do was to make cars, trucks, houses and buildings more energy efficient. That, he wrote, would eliminate the need to build more nuclear power plants and to search the planet for new sources of hydrocarbons.
Lovins -- ridiculed as a dreamer at the time -- was right. The conventional wisdom was wrong. Energy efficiency in the next decade reduced our oil consumption so fast, it broke the pricing power of OPEC and crushed oil prices.
Now, working with a team from his Rocky Mountain Institute and with the support of the Department of Defense, Lovins has a bolder idea: Apply energy efficiency to end our dependence on oil. Not just foreign oil, mind you, all oil. In the process, we can revolutionize (and save) our automobile industry, create a million jobs, strengthen our economy, end the flow of oil money that funds terrorism and win enduring national security.
In "Winning the Oil Endgame," Lovins shows us the path to reduce our oil consumption. How much? How fast? Think about these figures:
We could reduce the amount we import from the Persian Gulf by 2015.
We could use less oil by 2025 than we used in 1970.
We could import no oil at all by 2040.
We could use no oil at all by 2050. More impressive, much of this can be done simply by getting back on the efficiency-improvement path we were on when we responded to the first and second OPEC oil price shocks in 1973 and 1979.
for full article
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P113797.asp?GT1-6359
