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

238National Energy Securitymuch investment is worthwhile, because it will omit the resiliency benefits. Ifthe social cost of vulnerability were put into the economic balance betweenefficiency and increased energy supply, that balance would shift in favor ofefficiency. To make the argument stronger, however, this discussion considersonly the narrow economic viewpoint of direct (private internal) costs; and itconfines itself to those efficiency improvements which cost less than whatincreased energy supplies would cost if the efficiency improvements were notmade. Most of the improvements considered are also cost-effective at presentenergy prices, which “roll in” costly new supplies with cheaper old suppliesand thus understate the “marginal” (incremental) cost of increasing supplies.By counting only direct economic costs, the economic comparisons in thischapter (and in the following one, which deals with resilient energy sources)implicitly value all risks, vulnerabilities, and side effects at zero. Thisapproach obviously understates how much efficiency is worth buying. Itwould be a poor basis for national policy, where security concerns must carrygreat weight. Yet, fortuitously, just doing what saves each individual money inthe narrowest sense would also dramatically improve the energy resilience ofboth the individual and the nation.The resilience benefits of efficient energy use are not only multiple; theyare synergistic—that is, they work together in such a way that the total benefitis greater than the sum of its parts. And they are nonlinear—small improvementsbuy a disproportionate amount of “insurance”. The benefits arise atevery scale, from the individual user to a whole nation and even the world.The following description of these benefits will show why improving end-useefficiency is the best buy in energy resilience: why, to paraphrase an oldPentagon slogan, it gives the “most bounce per buck.”The state of the artAccording to the Energy Information Administration, in 1973, on the eve of theArab oil embargo, the U.S. imported for consumption (excluding stockpilingand net of re-exports) six million barrels per day of crude oil and refined products.As higher prices failed to keep pace with inflation and “ProjectIndependence” policies favored only grandiose but slow supply projects, net oilimports soared to eight and a half million barrels per day in 1977. Thereafter,price-driven improvements in U.S. energy efficiency 3 were largely responsiblefor decreasing net oil imports to seven and eight-tenths million barrels per dayin 1978, six and two-tenths in 1980, and five and one-tenth (at times below four)in 1981—a forty percent net import decline in just four years. By early 1982, theOrganization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was selling the worlda third less oil than it had sold a decade earlier, and demand was still falling.