Amory Lovins - physicist, environmental scientist, writer and cofounder of Rocky Mountain Institute, presented his case at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s Future of Energy Summit, that the conventional wisdom regarding energy efficiency is misguided and short-sighted. His advice is to expand the boundaries of the problem to uncover new options.
He argues that moving beyond incremental upgrades to building standards, such as additional insulation to super insulation and super windows among other substantial improvements, can more than offset the cost of heating and cooling systems. He cited numerous examples where these types of improvements have more than covered the initial cost in future reductions in energy usage.
Extending this concept to a regional power market running on 100% distributed renewables, Lovins described how summer peaks in ERCOT could fall from a projected 55GW in 2050 to just over 30GW. He closed his remarks at the summit with “Blessed be your megawatts. Go forth and be fruitful and subtract.”
Read the full article here: https://www.rtoinsider.com/ercot-energy-efficiency-amory-lovins-90486/
