In TomPaine.com, the co-founder of a resource efficiency center known as RMI (Rocky Mountain Institute), Amory Lovins, relates that in 1991 EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) and a team of researchers at Rocky Mountain Institute determined it would be cheaper to deliver the same amount of electricity to customers in the United States, while saving 39 to 59 percent over what would go to run coal-fired or nuclear power plants.
Such electricity-saving innovation is getting better and cheaper. Thus, significant savings could come, not from privation or discomfort, but rather from smarter technologies.
Lovins’ main target* is coal. I previously have mentioned some strategies to extract more work from the same number of kilowatt-hours.
Avoiding coal’s burdens is not costly; it’s profitable. Smart coal companies are starting to see such alternatives not as a threat but as a key business opportunity.
* Note: Published in Scientific American (29 August 2005) as “More Profit with Less Carbon” (PDF)
While Lovins is not necessarily endorsing it in the article, a carbon tax is one approach to encourage greater efficiency and transition to some low- or no-carbon generation. The smart companies are changing; and, those that continue with business as usual may need such encouragement. Why? There now is sophisticated mapping, which conclusively demonstrates that after automobile emissions, coal-fired generation remains a significant contributor to greenhouse gases.
