{"id":2081,"date":"2019-10-25T14:53:55","date_gmt":"2019-10-25T14:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/sussexenergygroup\/?p=2081"},"modified":"2019-11-01T11:54:31","modified_gmt":"2019-11-01T11:54:31","slug":"markets-lovins-seg-keynote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/sussexenergygroup\/2019\/10\/25\/markets-lovins-seg-keynote\/","title":{"rendered":"Astonishing Energy Futures"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“Markets make a good servant but a bad master, and a worse religion.” – Amory Lovins<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Guest blog by Susan Sun<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn’t think my philosophy of life had a motto until I heard those words by Amory Lovins, the 2019 keynote lecturer at the Sussex Energy Group<\/a>, University of Sussex. Amory Lovins is a physicist, energy analyst, chair emeritus of Rocky Mountain Institute, and author of 31 books including Natural Capitalism<\/em>, Small Is Profitable<\/em>, and Reinventing Fire<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To sum up his talk on Thursday 12th September on Astonishing Energy Futures: technology can save us from the climate crisis – but not in the way you might think. His bold hypothesis is that energy efficiency, far from being a dwindling and rising-cost resource, can continue to decouple wealth from energy consumption long into the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Even since 1975, improvements in energy efficiency – not just in\nproducts, but the way whole systems are designed – have saved an amount of\nprimary energy consumption in the US thirty times<\/strong> that\ngenerated by renewable energy growth in the same time period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lovins\"
US primary energy consumption since 1975, showing the difference between actual and what it would’ve been if 1975 products and infrastructure had continued as they were – that wedge is 30 times the increased energy generated by renewables\u2019 growth! (Image credit: Amory Lovins)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

While this impressive feat has put us in a much better position than\nwe’d otherwise be in, there’s no time for complacency: the line of energy consumption is\nstill going up, and so too are greenhouse gas emissions globally<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amory Lovins took us through a few examples of integrative design<\/strong>. You can read more quantitative detail in his open-access paper (with four-minute video abstract), How big is the energy efficiency resource?<\/a><\/em>.

An un-glamorous example to start with. Pipes are everywhere in factories. If you can make pipes shorter, fatter and straighter, you cut down the friction of pushing things through the pipe – then you don’t need as much energy for pumping – and what’s more, you don’t need such big pumps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lovins\"
Left: long, thin, crooked pipes, needing big pumps to overcome flow friction, and what they should be on the right: shorter, fatter, straighter. (Image credit: Amory Lovins)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Accommodating\nthese shorter, fatter, straighter pipes requires a complete re-thinking of the\ndesign process. Instead of laying out the machinery first and then fitting\npipes around them, you lay out the pipes<\/em> first\nand position machinery around them<\/em>.\nIt’s not snazzy, it’s not a fancy new widget or gizmo, it’s just a different\nway of thinking about things. Lovins says, \u201cBend minds, not pipes.\u201d
\n
\nAnd it leads to incredible results: flow\nfriction reduced by 80-90%, at the same or even lower capital expenditure, or\npayback within a year in the case of retrofits – because you’re not paying for\nsuch big powerful pumps and motors. Replicate that in all the factories in the\nworld and you could halve global coal-fired electricity generation!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u200bApply\nthese ideas to buildings and you get the PassivHaus concept. To vehicles, and the result is ultra-lightweight (but very\nsafe) cars. Then match the entire energy\nsupply system to smaller demand and today\u2019s market prices, and according to\nAmory Lovins:<\/p>\n\n\n\n