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

416Brittle Powerprivate analysts have proposed acceleratedscrappage of inefficient cars for at least sevenyears. The federal government has not yetpaid attention. The one officially sponsoredstudy (Energy & Environmental Analysis1980) uses such artificially restrictive assumptionsthat the calculated savings were smalland costly. The Department of Energy’s supposedlyencyclopedic survey of major oil-savingoptions (DOE 1980) does not even mentionaccelerated scrappage. By November1980, DOE’s senior oil-saving analysts hadnot done even back-of-the-envelope arithmeticabout it. Even Gray & von Hippel (1981) omitthe possibility from their otherwise excellentsurvey, although they expect that normal marketforces alone will improve the fleet averageto about sixty mpg by 2000 anyhow.78 That is von Hippel’s estimate of nearlytwenty-three hundred dollars per car (SERI1981); the actual value is almost certainlylower (Shackson & Leach 1980; Gorman &Heitner 1980). The oil saving will actually besomewhat less than assumed here, because theaverage car sold in the U.S. in 1981—the onethat would presumably be displaced by thesixty-mpg-version—had an on-road efficiencyof about twenty mpg, not fifteen. In partialcompensation, however new cars tend to bedriven more miles per year than old cars, sointroducing new cars yields a disproportionateoil saving for the fleet.79 Deese & Nye 1981; Davis 1981.80 Davis 1981:620.81 Congressional Research Service 1981;OTA 1980a; Masselli & Dean 1981. In late1981, the plant-gate price of shale oil (in 1981dollars) was estimated to be about forty-fivedollars a barrel. By early 1982, over one hundreddollars a barrel. The mark-up for refining,marketing, and distribution would normallybe over twelve dollars per barrel, plus afive-dollar premium because shale oil is harderto refine than natural crude.82 Stockman 1977; citations in Lovins &Lovins 1980:70ff.83 Sant 1979.84 Sant et al. 1981.85 SERI 1981.86 Lovins & Lovins 1982.87 Lovins et al. 1982.88 Steen et al. 1981.89 Lovins et al. 1982.90 Lovins & Lovins 1980.91 Ibid.:91–125.92 Sørensen 1980; Lovins et al. 1982.93 Sørensen 1980; SERI 1981; Lovins et al.1982.Notes to Chapter Sixteen1 This book does not consider geothermalenergy or tidal power (moonpower), since neitheris renewable in principle. In the right sitesand with due attention to their considerablepotential for environmental damage, however,both could, where economic, be locally importantfor providing heat and electricity respectively.2 Sørensen 1979.3 Metz 1978.4 Sørensen 1976, 1979.5 Kahn 1978:33.6 Kahn 1979:319ff.7 Kerr 1981a.8 Kahn 1978, 1979; Sørensen 1976, 1979;Systems Control 1980; Diesendorf 1981.9 Ryle 1977.10 There could be modest changes in theoptimal ratio of the dams’ storage volume totheir peak output (Kahn 1978, 1979).11 OTA 1978.12 See Lovins 1977b, 1978, for a fuller definitionand discussion.13 See Lovins 1977b, 1978, and theAppendix Three tabular data on convertingelectricity or fuels into heat as compared withsupplying heat directly.14 Before efficiency improvements, eightpercent of U.S. delivered energy needs—thepremium, non-thermal applications (Lovins1977b)—can economically justify such a costlyform of energy as electricity. However, thirteenpercent of delivered energy is supplied inthe form of electricity, and sixteen percentwould be if many power plants were notstanding idle, unable to sell their output.Thus, five-thirteenths of the electricity suppliedis already spilling over into uneconomicuses—space-conditioning and water heating(Lovins 1982).