A Plug for Negawatts
Amory Lovins interview in the current issue of Mother Jones is a great read if you’re interested in solving our energy and climate issues without sacrifice, while generally increasing everyone’s standard of living.
Clean, renewable energy sources do not need subsidies to thrive — all they need to be fully competitive is removal of the massive subsidies that currently entrench our increasingly untenable energy status quo.
That’s right, market economics and good old fashioned capitalism hold the solutions to the big issues we face, if only our “conservative” government would allow them to operate.
Amory Lovins is co-founder, chairman, and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Dude! I always said the same thing.
its like when the Japanese first invested Judo, they knew they would have to make it a completive sport for people to get involved in it.
Same for anything, people need to be able to compete and smash the competition in order to feel the need to join.
Humans are just stupid like that.
May 27th, 2008 at 8:47 am
[…] we listen to our engineers and not our […]
June 27th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Three Cheers for the Unhampered Market! Thanks Jim!
August 4th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Lovins has done some fantastic work. The TI plant redesign was impressive. If his plan to drastically improve Walmart’s truck fleet efficiency happens, that will be fantastic.
Lovins is not perfect. He pushes natural gas fired cogeneration solutions. His poorly reasoned opposition to nuclear power detracts from his well reasoned support for efficiency. Nuclear Notes did a pretty good job of showing the flawed logic in Lovins’ anti-nuclear material in a four part blog serial: http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2008/06/amory-lovins-and-his-nuclear-illusion_05.html
Putting generation near loads makes sense. Using ALL of the heat energy that your generating equipment produces makes sense. Using natural gas to produce electricity makes less sense in today’s energy market than it did ten years ago, and it wasn’t economical back then either.
Removing subsidies is a move in the right direction. Holding fossil fuel plants to the same standard we hold nuclear plants is another move in the right direction. Nuclear power plant operators pay to store their waste. Who pays to store the CO2 emissions from the natural gas Cogen Mr. Lovins prefers?
Contrary to Mr. Lovins’ statements, nuclear plants are not always billion dollar projects:
http://www.atomicinsights.com/AI_03-20-05.html
http://www.atomicengines.com/index.html
http://www.eskom.co.za/nuclear_energy/pebble_bed/pebble_bed.html
Lets truly open the market up. Remove subsidies. Minimize externalities. Allowing a power plant to pump CO2 into the atmosphere for free is an externality that needs to be addressed.
November 12th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Burning a fuel is burning a fuel is burninga fuel. Who doesnt understand that this is bad. Clean energy products are the future not nuclear power plants, not increasing oil drilling. If we dont put our foot down and demand a change our kids wont have a future. If we dont change the way we are thinking and save our natural resources for making important items we will run out and we will ruin our air which ruins our water and without either one we dont exist. Goto http://www.wecansolveit.org and join in on the race to solve our climate crisis and addiction to oil. We’re not asking for change WE DEMAND IT!!!!!