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Saturday, February 28, 2004

Environment - Consultant to the oil industry predicts demand for oil will fall

A long and fascinating feature was published on the front page of the NY Times business section today about Amory B. Lovins, the man who, according to the Times:

first gained notoriety in the mid-1970's for predicting that nuclear power was doomed because of the steadily rising cost of building new plants. He warned a disbelieving Wall Street and the utility industry that it would be financially reckless to invest in large new power plants of any sort because investments in energy efficiency, or "negawatts," as he called them, would almost always be cheaper than new megawatts.

His reputation was forged in an article in Foreign Affairs in 1976, when he argued for a soft path emphasizing energy efficiency over what he called the hard path based on expectations that the nation had no choice but to build thousands of large new power plants to meet its energy needs. * * *

Long before other experts worried about such things, Mr. Lovins also described the nation's reliance on big power plants and a nationwide electric grid as a brittle power structure vulnerable to terrorism and extensive blackouts.

Although harshly criticized at the time by the utility industry, his projections proved more prescient than the conventional ones. These days, energy industry executives who have never heard of Mr. Lovins are probably as rare as theologians who have never picked up a Bible. Mr. Lovins and the institute are also widely known in architecture and engineering circles as advocates of "green design."

Here are two articles Lovins published in The American Prospect in 2002: "Mobilizing Energy Solutions," and "Energy Forever."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 28, 2004 03:38 PM
Posted to Environmental Issues