Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

Chapter Fifteen: End-Use Efficiency: Most Resilience Per Dollar 237have more buffer storage built in than today’s systems. The argument that, forexample, it is wrong to stop a factory’s steam leaks now, because that will reducethe scope for doing so later to save energy painlessly during a shortage, reflectsa mistaken view of the nature of energy use. The fallacy is often expressed as ananalogy: that a society using energy is like a fat person whose reserves of fat canfend off starvation if food becomes scarce. But this analogy is misleading. A leanerenergy system like a healthier person, saves money all the time by needing lessenergy for normal operation. That saving helps to displace the most vulnerableenergy supplies, such as oil from the Persian Gulf, and so reduces the effect (andperhaps the likelihood) of cutoffs in those supplies. A country that uses no foreignoil cannot be blackmailed by a threat of cutoff.This chapter shows how energy efficiency can yield greater security. Insteadof waiting for shortages to occur, we should seek to reduce or prevent them bypromptly increasing energy efficiency to a level that provides a generous “cushion”of both normal and emergency energy supplies. By doing more with less,it may be possible to avoid altogether having to do without. Insulating the roofmay prevent freezing in the dark. Efficient cars, by reducing or eliminating theneed to import oil, can relieve concerns about interruption of those imports.More specifically, more efficient energy use can reduce energy vulnerabilityin at least six ways, described more fully below. Higher efficiency:• can completely eliminate dependence on the most vulnerable sources;• enables the most resilient sources to meet a larger fraction of total energyneeds—and within a few decades, to replace, largely or wholly, the vulnerablesupplies on which our nation now depends (Chapter Sixteen);• delays and slows down the depletion of fuel supplies (a more efficientfactory can run longer on its fuel stockpiles without needing to replenish them);• can reduce the maximum severity of failures (left without heat, a heat-tighthouse simply cannot get as cold as a leaky house);• makes improvised substitute supplies much more effective and leavesenough time to get them working (sources of fuel alcohols which wouldnot do much to help run gas-guzzlers can go far toward running a fleet offuel-sipping cars); and• is achieved by technologies which are in general less vulnerable in theirown right than technologies which increase energy supply. (Roof insulationand heat exchangers simply cannot be disrupted in the same way asoil tankers and transmission lines; and if they are disrupted, the failure generallyaffects only a few people for a short period.)Achieving these benefits may require extra investment in money, brains, orattention. 2 But a purely economic assessment will generally understate how