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

Chapter Sixteen: Inherently Resilient Energy Supplies 283further research has not disclosed that there were actually more and easierways to achieve a renewable energy goal than had been suspected. While thathappy history is no basis for extrapolating into the future (and this book doesnot do so), it does suggest that any snapshot of what has been developed in aperiod of about ten years does not begin to disclose, let alone exhaust, all thepromise of renewable energy technologies. What will be considered the bestconcepts in a decade or two may not even have been thought of yet.Appendix Two summarizes some of the main directions of recent technicalprogress in demonstrating and deploying appropriate renewable sources. Thedetails are given there rather than in the text because they are rather technicaland not essential to the argument. What does matter is the conclusion: thatsuch renewable technologies are in fact available in great variety. Thosealready demonstrated, and either on the market today or undergoing productengineering for commercial production in well-proven forms, are ample to contribute,within the next two decades, more than a third of the total energy suppliesof the United States. 57 The same technologies, without further technologicalprogress (which is occurring very rapidly) are adequate to meet essentiallyall of the long-term energy needs of every country so far studied—includingnot only the United States, but also other heavily industrialized countrieswhich are variously colder, cloudier, farther north, and more densely populated,such as Britain, France, West Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Japan. 58Economic status of resilient renewable sourcesAppendix Three first describes some of the pitfalls of economic assessments(especially those which compare renewable with nonrenewable energysources), and then presents a sample analysis using empirical cost and performancedata. The assumptions are consistently weighted against the conclusions,to ensure that those conclusions are durable and do not depend ondebatable details. For completeness, the analysis also includes typical pricesfor efficiency improvements. The data reveal that the best buy will almostalways result from combining improved energy efficiency with renewableenergy investments—an option which most studies ignore by considering thesetwo ingredients only in isolation from each other.Leaving the detailed data and their interpretation for the appendix, thegeneral results can be briefly summarized. In all four categories of energyservice needs—low-temperature heat (thirty-five percent of all U.S. deliveredenergy requirements today), high-temperature heat (twenty-three percent), liquidfuels for vehicles (thirty-four percent), and electricity (eight percent), efficiencyimprovements are the cheapest way of providing the service, followed