How to spark a 'renewables revolution' Part 2

Continuing from yesterday

We particular agree with his statement that we need to push ahead, aggressively, on reduced use of fossil fuels, through all available investments in efficiency, as we build clean energy sources.

Let us know your thoughts.

"...This international intrigue isn't new for Lovins. As co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute and a longtime energy consultant, he's spent decades dealing with global energy issues; according to his RMI bio, he has "briefed 21 heads of state, given expert testimony in eight countries and 20+ states, delivered thousands of lectures, and written 31 books and more than 450 papers." He also quickly saw Japan's potential after the Fukushima crisis, writing in a March 2011 op-ed that "perhaps this tragedy will call Japan to global leadership into a post-nuclear world."

While Japan may be more open to an energy shift than the U.S. is, both could phase out finite fuels like uranium and coal without economic harm, Lovins said at Thursday's roundtable. It's actually in their best interest, he added, since nonrenewable fuels are costly to extract and will eventually run out. "They're not embedded in the economy because it's cheaper to leave them in the ground," he said. "Smart investors are diversifying to get out of that business and into something much more durable."

The shift to renewable energy won't happen overnight, Lovins acknowledged, but he pointed out that countries can still make improvements in the meantime by using current fuels more efficiently. Energy waste has been a focus of his for decades, from designing lighter cars that use less gasoline to pushing for simpler, decentralized electrical grids. (He even coined a term 20 years ago, "negawatt," to describe a unit of saved energy.) And while political friction tends to slow the switch to new power sources, he argued Thursday that saving energy and money has bipartisan appeal. "It's hard to find people who don't like efficiency," he said.

Lovins discussed a range of ways to promote efficiency in the U.S. or anywhere, such as performance-based design of industrial facilities, self-sufficient microgrids that reduce the need for "big, vulnerable power plants," and letting companies expense their efficiency investments. He conceded "it's hard to do big things without Congress" — where many lawmakers want to end federal support for wind and solar power — but also cited smaller, subtler ways of speeding the shift to renewables, such as cities charging utilities for their water use to discourage water-intensive fossil fuels.

The future of energy is "small and granular," Lovins said, with more diversity and distribution of power sources instead of the traditional "big and lumpy" approach. Such a paradigm shift could curb the main causes of climate change, but Lovins is more focused on the economic and logistical benefits, suggesting nonrenewable fuels and inefficiencies aren't necessarily embedded in our economy — just in our heads.

"There's a lot of hidden value that's not being recognized," he said. "But once it is, you may find yourself in a much quicker transition than you thought."