Mastering Six Critical Challenges

Amory Lovins has a new book engineers should read - - Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era.  The fire in this case is a cleaner and more efficient energy world - - a world marked by "creative destruction" of the old inefficient energy portfolios.  Engineering is really good at making systems more efficient - - we get the optimization of system inputs and outputs.  We also get the fact that efficiency improvements generally costs less than any kind of natural gas (regardless of the technology advances of hydrofracking) - - as well as avoiding its externalises.

In general, most engineers understand where we need to end up regarding our energy transformation.  We understand the process and the potential prize. 

Lovins outlined six major challenges along the path of energy transformation.  I see lots of opportunities and prizes - - for many generations of engineers.  The six challenges:

1. Transform the auto industry.  No more obese gas-guzzlers.  Our cleaner, safer, oil-free world - and the health of this vital sector - depends upon the industry's ability to produce far fitter vehicles at roughly the same cost, before their old and new competitors do.
2. Dramatically reduce the distances traveled by our autos and the haul length, weight, and volume of cargo carried by our trucks.  This won't be achieved through sacrifice, deprivation, or diminished economic vitality.  Instead, it will come from gradually redesigning our communities and businesses to increase choices, save time and money, and make life easier, healthier, and safer.
3. Build efficient buildings and retrofit existing ones on a tremendous scale.  Just one energy-efficient building makes a difference.  Multiply that by 120 million buildings, and we have a revolution.  It's a challenging task, of course, and will require everything from education and retreading designers to stricter building codes and innovative financing.
4. Sustain and accelerate energy savings and cogeneration in industry.  Both, and increasingly on-site renewable supplies of heat and electricity, are keys to a durably competitive and resilient future for this engine of the national economy.
5. Keep slashing the cost of renewable energy.  Wind, solar, and other renewables are already traveling down a steep learning curve.  But the further they go - and much more is possible - the more rapidly we can reinvent fire in the sector with arguably the greatest economic, security, and climate leverage.
6. Revamp utilties' rules and operating models.  We will never create a future free of fossil fuels if utilties' profits depend on how much electricity they sell, or if distributed renewable sources can't feed electricity into the grid.  Public utility commissions must change the rules, enabling and rewarding rapid adoption of best buys (efficiency, CHP, and renewables) closing obsolete plants that deserve a graceful retirement, and not imposing on customers and dubious projects' risks that shareholders won't invest in.