SIEMENS

Over 100,000 people have toured the lowenergy house Amory Lovins co-designed and built in the 1980s. However, the bespectacled 62-year-old energy expert exudes enthusiasm as he explains the benefits of his recently modernized domicile to visitors with the pride of a man who has turned his ideas into reality - at least in his own home.

The house is located 2,200 meters above sea level in the Rocky Mountains, not too far from Aspen, Colorado, where winter temperatures used to reach minus 44 degrees Celsius. The windows’ double glazing encloses two invisible plastic films with heat-reflecting coatings on both sides, and insulating xenon gas fills the spaces in between. Superwindows, superinsulation and ventilation heat recovery - a package that helped inspire the German “Passivhaus” movement - cut the building’s heating requirements by about 99 percent. This helped pay for saving nearly all water-heating and electricity too. The total net extra capital cost was repaid by energy savings in ten months. The equipment monitoring the house’s data streams may use more energy than the appliances and LED lights.

During the day, Lovins uses rooftop solar cells to generate electricity. Thanks to his efficient household appliances and lamps, he can often feed some of this power into the grid. At night, electricity is provided by wind power from the public grid. The roof also houses a solar- thermal unit that provides hot water and heats the floors. It has thus been over a year since Lovins has had to use the two wood stoves that he installed as a backup. His house is so warm that banana trees have been thriving in its winter garden for more than 20 years. A tour of the house confirms Amory Lovins’ key hypothesis that the biggest energy source is it’s very productive use.

Lovins, who was awarded an Alternative Nobel Prize in 1983, studied at Harvard and Oxford. At the latter he wasn’t allowed to pursue a doctorate in energy. But he was obsessed with the issue, and in 1976 he went public with his message in an essay published in the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs. In 1982, he and his then wife, Hunter Lovins, established Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) in Old Snowmass, Colorado, which today has over 90 employees and partly funds itself through consulting contracts with major companies. Customers include energy groups, automotive companies, the Pentagon, and retail-sector giants such as Wal-Mart. Lovins now serves as the Institute’s Chairman and Chief Scientist.

You’ve been a pioneer in the field of energy efficiency since the 1970s. How does it feel to see the things you’ve been talking about become part of the public discourse?

Lovins: It’s definitely better to see ideas you’ve promoted gain acceptance after a long time than never to see them accepted. Still, that doesn’t mean RMI and I can simply sit back and relax. On the contrary, we’ve just launched our most ambitious project ever, which we call “Reinventing Fire.” This new project coherently brings together into one synthesis all the knowledge we’ve gained over the past three decades. We’re developing a comprehensive roadmap for a profitable transition from coal and oil to efficiency and renewable energy. We also continue to work closely with major companies to develop and spread models of best practice.

Oil is an issue you addressed back in 2004, when you published Winning the Oil Endgame…

Lovins: Yes - and we’ve moved further toward independence from oil today than we could have hoped for six years ago. Gasoline consumption in the U.S. has been declining since 2007, mainly due to more fuel-efficient vehicles and the use of biofuel additives. The U.S. could become independent of imported oil by 2040 and of all oil by 2050. Deutsche Bank is even forecasting that global oil use will start decreasing around 2016.

Eliminating coal is going to be much more difficult, however. The International Energy Agency (IEA) believes that population growth and increasing prosperity will cause global electricity consumption to rise by 76 percent between now and 2030. Experts predict that coal-fired power plants will still be covering more than one third of electricity requirements even in 2030.

Lovins: This scenario will not come about if smart decisions are made. I agree it may be more difficult to stop using coal than oil. But we need to get away from coal, both for climate protection and to make the electricity system more secure and affordable. RMI found that energy efficiency, plus distributed and renewable energy sources in the U.S. can produce 22 times as much electricity each year as US coal does now.