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

Chapter Fifteen: End-Use Efficiency: Most Resilience Per Dollar 255could be directly connected to vital production machinery and could continueoperation pretty much as usual for substantial periods. If community-scalegrids were isolated but usable, a local microhydro set or industrial cogeneratornormally considered a small fraction of total supply would, with highly efficientuse, become able to meet most or all normal needs. If transmission linessurvived, they could transfer any remaining steady supplies of power fromhydroelectricity or cogeneration over long distances without straining regionalinterties. Petroleum-dependent peaking plants would not have to be operated;fuel stockpiles for any required thermal plants or cogenerators would be greatlystretched; cogenerators could even run on locally available wastes. The sixmajor steam-using industries, being cost-effective net exporters of electricity,would free up electricity for other, less self-reliant users. 69 In short, efficient useof electricity would provide enough “cushion” of both normal and emergencysupplies to enable the nation to survive, and probably to recover from, even aprolonged failure of the entire national electrical system—an event which oureconomy would otherwise be unlikely to withstand.A benefit of end-use efficiency which emerges from the previous exampleis that it displaces the most costly or most vulnerable energy supplies. That is, efficiencyimprovements can provide unchanged energy services not only with less totalenergy, but with less in particular of the energy that comes from the least attractivesources. Thus, decreases in total oil consumption would normally bereflected as decreases in the use of oil from the Persian Gulf. Oil savings canthus provide disproportionate gain in energy security. Unfortunately, officialproposals to save oil by expanding, say, nuclear power are fallacious, 70 bothbecause little oil is used to generate electricity and because much faster andcheaper methods of saving oil are known. For this reason, such misdirectedconcepts as substituting uranium for oil actually slow down oil displacement bydiverting resources from more effective measures.The magnitude of these more effective measures is easily illustrated. U.S.oil imports can be eliminated by about 1990 by two relatively simple measures,neither of which has been seriously considered in federal energy policy.The prescription is distressingly simple: stop living in sieves and stop drivingPetropigs. The sieves (buildings) are so leaky that just basic weatherizationand insulation of American buildings could save over two and a half millionbarrels per day of oil and gas by 1990, at an average price under seven dollarsper barrel, and a similar additional amount at a similar price during1990–2000. 71 The Petropigs (gas-guzzling cars and light trucks), however, area more complex problem.Gas-guzzlers have such a low trade-in value that they have been tricklingdown to low-income people who can afford neither to run nor to replace them.