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

Chapter Fifteen: End-Use Efficiency: Most Resilience Per Dollar 263expanding the same kinds of inherently vulnerable energy systems which areof such security concern today.There would be no alternative to “strengththrough exhaustion” (of domestic resources). A future of the “the past writlarge” would mean ever greater domestic vulnerability, with no respite in sight.The SERI analysis summarized above illustrated a different possibility. Itshowed how the United States can achieve a strong economy over the nexttwenty years with—indeed, by—investing heavily in energy productivity, so asto achieve a proper balance with energy supply investments. If this were done,the most vulnerable sources (imported oil, LNG, frontier oil and gas, synfuels,nuclear power) could be phased out entirely. Other vulnerable systems(central power stations and their grids, domestic oil and gas pipelines,Western coal), rather than becoming ever more essential to total supply,would become less important than they are now. But a result of even greaterimportance is that inherently resilient, sustainable energy sources (ChapterSixteen) could cost-effectively supply up to thirty-five percent of total nationalneeds in the year 2000—and approximately one hundred percent within afew decades thereafter. 92 Sustainable resources, not exhaustion, would thenunderpin long-term prosperity and security.Thus greater efficiency has the security advantage that it can rapidly eliminatethe most vulnerable (and costly) sources of supply. The remainingdemand could also be so reduced—by a quarter in 2000 and by more thereafter93 —that insecure and dwindling fuels could be readily replaced by almostinvulnerable renewable sources. Moreover, these sources, as the followingchapter will show, are also the cheapest long-run supply technologies available.Far from being minor, unimportant sources, the many kinds of appropriaterenewable technologies could then make a major and soon a dominantenergy contribution. Thus a major structural change in energy supply wouldbecome both possible and economically preferable. By “being sparing,” inLao-tse’s phrase, our nation could “be prepared and strengthened” so as to“be ever successful.” Using energy in an economically efficient way can buythe American energy system time in which to complete comfortably the transformationfrom living on energy capital to living on energy income—and fromvulnerability to resilience.