In contrast, the official forecasts around 1975–6 proved too high by about 60–70%. The analysis suggested halving of energy intensity “around the turn of the century”. It gave a hypothetical energy intensity trajectory falling 72% in 50 years, compared with an actual fall of 56% in the first 40 years. In the Summer 2016 issue of Solutions Journal, the house magazine of Rocky Mountain Institute, Lovins said that the analysis gave accurate foresight (within 1 per cent in 2000) about total US primary energy use. A customer wants to use electricity to operate lights and computers and freezers and air conditioning and ovens they buy the electricity only as a way to get those services.įorty years on, and Lovins said that the analysis was very accurate with regard to the demand side, predicting significant improvements in efficiency and the fall in energy intensity, but was less accurate on the supply side. The soft energy path flowed from treating energy not as an end in itself but as a means to an end. By 1913, similar photographs are dominated by cars, and there is barely a horse to be seen.īack in 1976, Amory Lovins wrote his landmark article “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?”, describing two alternate energy paths, one a centralised energy system based on coal and nuclear power, which he called the Hard Path, and one, the Soft Path, concentrating on energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. In 1900, photographs of the Easter Day parade in New York are dominated by horses and horse-drawn vehicles, and there is hardly a car to be seen. It can be hard to appreciate just how quickly the world can change, but Stanford lecturer Tony Seba offers a striking example. However, part of the difficulty of adapting to a shifting environment is understanding how that environment is changing. In doing this, they need to adapt to a shifting environment. In particular, many power utilities believe that their objective is to sell electricity to the consumer at a cost-effective price, and the more electricity they sell, the better they are doing. Market forces and changing technical capabilities create a rapidly changing landscape, and companies either adapt to that environment, or go the way of the dinosaurs. David Flin looks at some of these early prognostications and spoke to him about current drivers in energy, not least of which is the advent of the electric car. Co-founder, chief scientist, and chairman emeritus of Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado, USA, Amory Lovins has been analysing trends in the energy sector for four decades, with some considerable success.
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