If you had to pick your favorite global energy event of the year, what would it be? Don’t worry, I’ll answer for you: BERC’s Energy Summit! Back and better than ever, the 2024 Energy Summit consisted of an impressive, varied array of speakers from different sectors within the energy industry. The level of talent and knowledge on display makes BERC’s Energy Summit a must-attend for anybody interested in energy. BERC had the honor of hosting Amory Lovins, cofounder of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and staunch energy efficiency advocate, as the Summit’s keynote speaker.
A physicist by training, Amory Lovins co-founded RMI in 1982, serving as chief scientist for many years. RMI is a nonprofit with the goal of transforming the global energy system to secure a clean, prosperous, zero-carbon future. Amory’s work spans across many disciplines but he is often known for his contributions to energy efficiency, using integrative design to provide radical innovation across the built environment. Amory has received numerous honors including Time’s 100 most influential people, and Foreign Policy’s 100 top global thinkers. His discussion, albeit virtual due to time constraints, was an incredible opportunity to hear from such an insightful, brilliant mind.
He began by highlighting some important statistics about the energy transition.
- Global renewables production is set to surpass coal by 2025.
- The International Energy Agency (IEA) is forecasting 3.7 new terawatt hours of renewables by 2028, with the world set to add more renewables now than in the last 100 years.
Despite the incredible impact of renewables, in terms of decarbonization, energy efficiency has had more of an impact.
- Energy efficiency has had 27 times the impact of renewables on decreasing emissions.
- Tripling end-use efficiency can save the U.S. trillions of dollars while supporting a larger economy.
These numbers show that building out additional supply is not the only way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is still room to advance demand-side measures such as energy efficiency and it is economically and environmentally feasible to do so.
Amory provided an excellent example of how innovative design can reduce energy impact – his very own home.
Built in 1982, the house he “Zoomed” in from is a testament to the power of sustainable building practices. Located in Old Snowmass, Colorado, the building is the “Burj Khalifa” of energy efficiency. The exterior is super insulated, with superwindows that lose about one-tenth as much heat as a single pane of glass. The building is 99% passively solar-heated and 1% actively solar-heated. The interior is equally efficient with an entryway that serves as an airlock and a storm door that insulates eight times as well as a wooden door. Moreover, there is a greenhouse inside the home, which acts as a furnace providing heat for the building for most of the year. Even better, the greenhouse produces bananas, papayas and provides a home for numerous marine animals. The total construction costs were on par with typical homes built in the area in 1982. The house saves around 90% of the electricity and 99% of the water of a comparable home in the area, and these savings paid back the additional costs of these upgrades within ten months.
Amory’s home might be a dogmatic example of efficiency, more robust than most people could typically implement. However, it serves an important lesson of the potential of integrative design. We can use smarter structural design such as tension structures that use 80-90% less material and fabric forms (3D printed) that use greater than 50% less material. For instance, the BMW’s new model i3 used carbon-fiber, an ultralight material that improved efficiency, safety, and cost since it needs fewer batteries due to its lighter weight. The same logic applied to other vehicles like planes and trucks can make those vehicles 3 to 5 times more efficient. We need to think of design as a method of efficiency with integrated design as another tool in the toolbox when thinking about how to lower emissions.
Finally, Amory listed endless reasons why energy efficiency gets such little attention. Some of those reasons being: end-use is essentially invisible since it involves many little actions; there is little attraction for the media to report on energy efficiency in a similar way to the new wind farm down the street; most US utilities are incentivized to sell more electricity, not less; policymakers think we have already seen all efficiency gains available, and on and on. To drive home the point that energy efficiency is still a large, abundant resource for emissions reduction, he posited that a 5 times increase in today’s energy efficiency is achievable. Making integrative design commonplace could help drive much of that large impact. We need to train all workers throughout industry to think in terms of integrated design. Stepping outside of the box and tackling problems in new and creative ways is crucial to help society reach net-zero. It would be imprudent for the energy transition to only innovate on the supply-side, energy efficiency through integrative design still possesses significant decarbonization opportunity.