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

260National Energy SecurityServices, Inc., at the same address.) Sant and his colleagues began in 1979 witha pioneering analysis of the “The Least-Cost Energy Strategy,” which “minimizesconsumer cost through competition.” 83 It showed that if, for about adecade before 1978, Americans had simply bought at each opportunity thecheapest means of providing the energy services which they actually receivedin 1978, then in that year they would have bought about twenty-eight percentless oil, thirty-four percent less coal, and forty-three percent less electricity thanthey did buy. They would also have paid about seventeen percent less moneyfor their energy services than they actually did pay. Efficiency improvementswould have made up virtually all the difference.In 1980–81, the same analysts then used an even more detailed model, inwhich many hundreds of supply and efficiency options could compete freely, toexamine the result of economically efficient investments during 1980–2000.They found that even if the size of the economy grew (correcting for inflation)by seventy-seven percent, total primary energy use would rise by only elevenpercent. 84 All of that energy growth would be in the industrial sector as othersectors became efficient faster than their activity levels grew. Electricity demandwould probably be stagnant for at least the first decade. Efficiency improvements(and some renewable sources) would so dominate the cost-effective choicesthat investment in conventional supply would virtually cease, and it wouldhardly be worth finishing building most of the power plants now under construction.The fraction of GNP used to buy energy services would go down,not up, so that far from driving inflation, the energy sector would become a netexporter of capital (and jobs) to the rest of the economy. Imported oil—the costliestoption except for new synfuel plants and power plants—would rapidly dwindleto about zero, simply because it has already priced itself out of the market.It cannot complete with efficiency improvements (or with most renewables) andwill therefore essentially eliminate itself without special attention.These conclusions have been strongly confirmed by a parallel but independentanalysis carried out by dozens of consultants coordinated by theSolar Energy Research Institute (SERI) at the request of then DeputySecretary of Energy John Sawhill. The SERI draft report was suppressed bythe Department of Energy but published by the Commerce Committee of theU.S. House of Representatives, and is now available commercially. 85The analysis assumed that by the year 2000, real Gross National Productwill be eighty percent greater than it was in 1977, and that personal income,comfort, and mobility will markedly increase. The study also tested investmentsin efficiency and renewables against costs for fuel and electricity which,while not as low as Sant’s, are still well short of realistic replacement costs.The SERI study embodied many technical conservatisms, and it assumed no