The Shape of the Future

E M Risse


 

Soft Consumption Paths

 

Energy consumption in the United States is growing at an unsustainable rate -- and we're running out of time before a crash landing. We need to think seriously and comprehensively about conservation.


                                                                            

This column kicks off the long-promised series of columns on mass consumption and the impact that “economic growth” and winner-take-all competitiveness have on the potential for humans to evolve a sustainable society. The series starts with consideration of conservative approaches to consumption of non-renewable energy supplies – aka, natural capital. This topic overlaps with issues of global climate change, Autonomobility and, of course, creating sustainable and functional human settlement patterns. We note the range of topics to be considered in this series at the conclusion of the column.

 

Getting Prepared to Rethink

the Future of Consumption

 

Gulf Oil War II is dragging on. It looks more and more like the war will have the worst of all possible outcomes: The United States starts a war that it cannot (or will not) finish, much less win.

 

Is it time to get a better perspective on the energy consumption/energy independence/natural capital depletion issue? The first of the columns on mass consumption and winner-take-all economic competitiveness will a look at energy consumption, energy conservation and related issues.

 

What is the big picture? What is the most prudent course of action for individuals, families, organizations, regions and the United States? Who can put relevant parameters in focus so that citizens can come to a well-consider understanding? Is it MainStream Media? Perhaps the third- grade class project on energy conservation would provide a more comprehensive perspective.

 

In spite of many Business-As-Usual preconceptions, The Washington Post has the resources to do great things in the realm of energy consumption and conservation awareness. From time to time, they do just that. One of the best things WaPo has done lately was sending a reporter to visit with Amory B. Lovins in Old Snowmass, Colorado. (See “One Man’s Long Battle To Get U.S. to Kick Oil” Steven Mufson 25 July 2006 on the front page of the Business Section.)

 

Given the recent weather, one might assume a place called “Old Snowmass” is where a snow mass existed until it melted. But no, Old Snowmass is the home of Lovins and his energy-consulting organization, the Rocky Mountain Institute. Visiting with Lovins is worth a journey. More on the trip later.

 

Lovins is one of the few real heroes of the conservation movement. He sketched out many elements of a rational, intelligent nation-state energy policy in the wake of the October 1973 Arab Oil Embargo. Now, 33 years later, Lovins is still saying the same things and they still make more sense that anything done by the current administration or any of the last nine federal administrations.

 

WaPo visited with Amory on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Lovins publishing a seminal article in Foreign Affairs (October 1976). This article morphed into the pivotal second chapter of his highly acclaimed book, "Soft Energy Paths: Toward A Durable Peace," published in 1977.

 

"Soft Energy Paths" has a home on the top shelf of the wall of books in the S/PI library that we relied on in writing "The Shape of the Future." Few books on those shelves have as many pages with five, six and even seven star paragraphs.

Lovins' ideas on energy conservation are an incredibly good place to put mass consumption of energy and other resources in perspective.

Those who have not read "Soft Energy Paths" in a while need to reread it. The WaPo story noted above is a good primer but does not do Lovins’ ideas justice, especially when one considers they were published in 1977.

 

The Record

 

Some would like to bury Lovins' ideas under a dune of shifting, formless excuses. Those leading and serving in the current federal administration – or hoping to get reelected to Congress in 2006, 2007 or 2008 – are among those who should pray Lovins’ ideas never surface.  Ironically these very “leaders” appear to have buried their own heads in even bigger piles of sand. They are, however, not the only ones to ignore Lovins.

 

Presidents, and the administrations they create and oversee, are looked to for leadership on important, nation-state-impacting issues like a sustainable energy supply. It is empirically obvious that since the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo effective ideas for shrinking foreign energy dependence have not been implemented.

 

Even more alarming, there has been an unsustainable growth of energy consumption from all sources and at all levels. Compounding this problem, governments have overseen the establishment of national and regional settlement patterns that require vast amounts of energy to achieve mobility and access. About two thirds of the total energy consumption is directly or indirectly related to mobility. When one adds the energy needed to heat and cool dysfunctionally located buildings and building agglomerations, the number approaches 80 percent of total energy consumption.

 

As we point out in Chapter One of "The Shape of the Future," this is gluttons consumption of energy is not due, as some claim, to the land area of the United States or to the nation-states overall population density. Canada has fewer people per acre but one half the average trip lengths due to more functional urban settlement patterns and related factors.

 

So, what have the national administrations done about energy consumption since the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo? R. Nixon was in the White house at the start of the embargo and Ford filled out his second term. There was “concern” but little action of lasting impact to address the geophysical reality of oil reserve distribution beyond policies and programs that have turned out to spawn terrorism.

 

J. Carter was running for office when Lovins wrote the Foreign Affairs article and in the White House when Soft Energy Paths was published. From our personal experience we know Mr. Carter was deeply concerned about the energy consumption and related settlement pattern issues when he took office. Carter’s ideas were laughed at and never given serious consideration by the proponents of Business As Usual. Few of his proposals died more quickly than the 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax.

 

In retrospect, few ideas would have done more immediate good than the scoffed-at 50-cent gas tax, except perhaps a $1.50 cent per gallon gas tax. A $1.50 tax would have brought the United States in line with fuel costs in the European Union. The EU energy consumption per capita has dropped since 1973, the United States' total and per-capita consumption have soared. EU energy consumption would have dropped more but for the need to complete with the cheap (due to energy subsidy) goods and services from the United States and other nation states that ignored the need to implement Fundamental Change to achieve a conservative energy consumption policy. (Some nation-states such as Brazil have taken an even more unconstructive approach to energy demand.  See “Energy Independence and Sustainability,” May 28, 2006, on the Bacon’s Rebellion Blog.

As will be noted below, failure to raise the cost of energy to encourage conservative use of natural capital doomed most potential ways to rationalize energy consumption.

R. Reagan had the ear and respect of the majority of voters in the United States and could have sold citizens on a conservative, comprehensive energy strategy. His advisors chose instead to prioritize feel-good-happiness based on economic growth and consumption over long-term happiness and safety flowing from a sustainable energy consumption trajectory and a conservative ecological footprint.

 

G. Bush I had a first-hand understanding of oil production and friends in the Middle East but choose a small war over comprehensive solutions, and compounded the dysfunctional direction set by Nixon/Ford. W. Clinton had in Al Gore a Vice President who was (and is) fervently intent on raising citizen awareness about energy consumption and its consequences but the administration did little to change the trajectory of the prior five administrations.

 

G. Bush II made a policy of ignoring growing evidence of impending crisis and choose another war as the best way to ensure energy supplies. Of late Mr. Bush has suggested the need to solve the “addiction” to foreign oil. Most of the “solutions” put forth by the administration focus on pumping out and burning up more of the United States remaining resources  – a long-term, no-win solution in the context of finite resources and an unsustainable settlement pattern that requires vast amount of energy for citizens to access and acquire the elements of a quality life.

 

Lovins has been saying for 30 years: “It is a lot cheaper, easier and faster to save energy than it is to buy or produce it.” Turns out it is safer too.

 

A Few Benchmarks

 

Here are some benchmarks to use to measure how United States has improved energy conservation over the past 30 years. Last week in a doctor’s waiting room we spotted an information source that even the current administration would believe. It is a two-page Chevron ad in the July 24 issue of Time.

 

A note pad in the ad lists three “conservation facts.”  Here is one: “Replacing one incandescent lightbulb with a compact fluorescent lamp would save 500 pounds of coal and over ½ ton of CO2 emissions.” In our home and office we have 152 incandescent light bulbs. (See End Note One.) All these fixtures and lamps have been constructed since 1990. These light bulbs are not on all the time and they are not all on at any one time. However, if the average house has half as many incandescent lights, by Chevron’s calculation, blanket use of fluorescent bulbs would save 1,875,000,000 tons of coal and 3,750,000,000 tons of CO2.

 

The Chevron ad does not say over what time period these savings would be realized but this quick calculation raises the question: Why are incandescent light bulbs still being sold 33 years after the Arab Oil Embargo made it very clear that the end of cheap oil was in view and decades after the first warnings of global climate change driven by human consumption were raised? (We will examine the climate change issue in a future column.)

 

Another Chevron “conservation fact” states that if one in 10 households used ENERGY STAR-qualified appliances, they would have the same benefit as planting 1.7 million acres of new trees. Why are all appliances not ENERGY STAR qualified? Why are they not a lot more energy efficient than ENERGY STAR, a level of performance that is technologically possible?

 

A related question could be asked about lowering the average driving speed. According to the Chevron ad, going from 65 to 55 miles per hour would save three million gallons a day – assuming one could find a place to drive 55 or 65 miles an hour within the cores of New Urban Regions where the vast majority of private vehicle miles are driven. Many states, including Virginia, are again raising the speed limit in response to “public pressure.”  That pressure is due to the fact that with dysfunctional settlement patterns and politicians and the Autonomobility crowd selling the Myth of Private Vehicle Mobility everyone wants to get “there” faster, wherever “there” is. (See “Regional Rigor Mortis,” June 6, 2005.)

Where is governance leadership in any of these areas impacting energy consumption?

The apparent object of the Chevron ad is to promote the image of Chevron as a responsible energy corporation. The ad also suggests that as long as citizens are wasting energy (by not adopting simple, straightforward measures) and as long as governments are not requiring them to conserve energy, Chevron should have a free hand to expand production so citizens can have all the energy they need (and waste).  Producing more petrochemicals is a viable energy supply tactic only until there are no more natural capital to exploit.

 

Since the late '70s most significant energy conservation initiatives were abandoned because, with cheap energy, it did not make economic sense to invest in conservation. This is particularly the case in settlement pattern initiatives as noted in End Note Two.

 

The Bottom Line

 

So, the bottom line is that citizens and their leaders have known for a long time how to do a much better job of energy conservation but have not made any progress -- in fact, they have gone in the wrong direction in high gear.

The United States has traded long-term energy conservation, energy independence, sustainability and national security for short-term economic growth. That is what you learn from reviewing Lovins’ work in the context of today’s reality.

From the perspective of human settlement patterns there is a much bigger lesson. It is not just conserving energy through the intelligent application of technology at the building scale that is important but the location of the buildings and the larger components of human settlement pattern in relationship to one another – aka, functional human settlement patterns.

 

Energy-saving designs dealing with building materials, site orientation, passive measures and new technology such as those contained in the study profiled in End Note Two only scratch the surface. Let us return to WaPo’s visit to Amory Lovins. A picture – and a quick look at a map of Colorado – is worth much more that a thousand words. Old Snowmass is on the west slope of the Rockies in Pitkin County, the same county as Aspen and other exclusive resorts.

 

How many who had reason to visit with Amory to explore energy conservation looked at a map of Colorado and decided to schedule a flight to Denver and rent a car?

 

Here is a wild guess: More energy was wasted driving from the Denver airport to Old Snowmass, as opposed to an alternate location for the Rocky Mountain Institute in Boulder near the University of Colorado, than was saved by the heating and cooling of the Institute with atriums, solar panels, super insulation and its natural landscaping.   How far do those who work at the Institute drive, and if they live nearby, how far do they drive to get groceries, services and recreation?

 

As we learned in the '70s, and documented in the '90s, when ones examines settlement patterns at this level of detail, the potential energy and other cost savings are huge. In fact, there is an order-of-magnitude difference in cost savings between functional and dysfunctional settlement patterns.

 

That order of magnitude is reflected in the 10X Rule, one of the Five Natural Laws of Human Settlement Pattern introduced in Chapter Four of "The Shape of the Future." The 10X savings does not come exclusively from energy conservation but much of it does.

 

We have recently received a new document pertaining to the “cost of sprawl.” The cost of alternative settlement patterns will be the subject of our next column. Future columns in this series will examine global climate change, Autonomobility, the prospect of ethanol, a “hydrogen economy” – or anything else short of Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns – having a significant impact on achieving a sustainable trajectory for civilization.    There may be no end to these topics but energy conservation is a good place to start. 

 

End Notes

 

(1). In addition to the 152 incandescent light bulbs, we also have 11 florescent bulbs, 3 halogen lights and 9 high-efficiency –  67 watts of power yields light levels equivalent to a 250 watt bulb – full sunlight spectrum lights in offices and the reading room.  In addition to standard wall and ceiling insulation, insulated double pane windows, etc., we have applied high efficiency filters on the east-, south- and west-facing windows and retractable awnings to shield the south walls and widows from direct sunlight during warm months.

 

(2).  It is not just in the past few years that developers and builders have explored the energy efficiency of alternative development patterns.  (See Mufson, Steven “As Power Bills Soar, Companies Embrace ‘Green Buildings’,”  WaPo 5 August 2006.  During the development of Burke Centre in the '70s and '80s, Burke Centre Partnership (BCP) explored a number of alternatives at the unit scale and larger scales.

 

BCP provided a site for, and did extensive grading and site work for Terra Centre Elementary, one of Fairfax County’s to energy-conserving schools.  (The other is Terraset Elementary near South Lakes High School in Reston). When the subsidy went away, no more energy- efficient schools were built. The reason: the low cost of energy.

 

Because the Partnership had demonstrated interest in energy conservation a respected landscape design firm packaged a proposal to federal energy officials to do an energy-saving alternative site plan and development criteria for several land bays, which was funded.  BCP provided technical support and turned over most of the Landings Neighborhood to the energy design team and promised to offer the land and the plan to prospective buyers. The plan saved some energy but no builder would buy the plan because layout and building guidelines did not yield enough savings given the then-current cost of energy.  In addition the corporation that became the primary builder in the Landings believed that the unit design and dooryard and cluster site plans would not do as well in the market as conventional designs.

 

Work in the 90s demonstrated that large savings were possible if more than just the unit design, materials and orientation were considered.  This will be explored in the next column in this series. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ed Risse and his wife Linda live inside the "Clear Edge" of the "urban enclave" known as Warrenton, a municipality in the Countryside near the edge of the Washington-Baltimore "New Urban Region."

 

Mr. Risse, the principal of

SYNERGY/Planning, Inc., can be contacted at spirisse@aol.com.

 

Read his profile here.