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.
|