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

Chapter Six: Picking Up the Pieces 67For all these reasons, it is difficult to quantify the cost of failure. Some typesof failures, however, are clearly so unacceptably vast that it would be worthpaying a very high price for effective insurance against them. Part Three of thisbook will show that the extra cost of that insurance can actually be negative.That is, an energy system in which catastrophic failures are impossible can costless to build and operate than one in which such failures are plausible and evenfrequent. The general vulnerabilities surveyed above give an enormous incentivefor achieving such a resilient energy system, even if it did cost extra. Toillustrate this fact, the next six chapters will show how these general types ofvulnerability can translate into specific major failures which have alreadyoccurred or which have so far been avoided only by great good luck.