{"id":2489040,"date":"2024-01-27T18:00:25","date_gmt":"2024-01-28T01:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/marston-energy-gap-can-be-bridged\/"},"modified":"2024-01-27T18:00:25","modified_gmt":"2024-01-28T01:00:25","slug":"marston-energy-gap-can-be-bridged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/opinion\/marston-energy-gap-can-be-bridged\/","title":{"rendered":"Marston: Energy gap can be bridged"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The experts tell us an energy gap looms. Fossil fuels are phasing out, and solar and wind power can\u2019t produce enough electricity to meet the demand in coming decades.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the thinking of Amory Lovins, the 76-year-old co-founder of RMI, formerly the Rocky Mountain Institute in western Colorado.<\/p>\n

A Harvard and Oxford dropout who\u2019s been called the \u201cEinstein of Energy Efficiency,\u201d he said recently: \u201cIf we do the right things, we\u2019ll look back and ask each other, \u2018What was all the fuss about?’\u201d<\/p>\n

He became famous in the 1970s after his research told him that building more polluting coal-fired power plants was a destructive mistake. His solution then was greater efficiency and reliance on renewables, and they, he insists, are still the answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThough it\u2019s invisible, efficiency will cut 50% of energy use and up to 80% if we do the right things,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>he told me recently. \u201cMost of the energy we use is wasted, which makes it much cheaper to save it rather than buy it or burn it.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to a recent\u00a0Princeton paper<\/a>, he\u2019s right: 84% of all energy consumed goes to waste during delivery or by leakage.<\/p>\n

To prove it decades ago, he built a passive solar, super-insulated house at 7,100 feet of elevation in Old Snowmass. It never had a heating system, though winters regularly recorded 40 degrees below-zero temperatures.<\/p>\n

When I arrived there recently at 8 a.m. it was 12 degrees F. Yet the house featured banana and papaya trees growing in natural light around a koi pond.<\/p>\n

We became acquainted when he read my January 2023 Writers on the Range column entitled; \u201cThe energy gap nobody wants to tussle with<\/a>.\u201d I\u2019d advocated building small modular nuclear reactors to bolster the grid when the wind doesn\u2019t blow and the sun doesn\u2019t shine.<\/p>\n

Lovins called to set me straight, and after a second conversation and more research, I\u2019m beginning to think he\u2019s right.<\/p>\n

Though he has many solutions for the energy gap, he touts\u00a0three major ways<\/a>\u00a0to find more energy in what we already do. Tops on the list is changing how we build and retrofit existing structures because buildings consume 75% of the electricity we buy.<\/p>\n

Most energy jobs in the United States are already increasing efficiency, ranging from upgrading windows and other retrofits, far outpacing the shrinking fossil fuels industry. (energy.gov<\/a>)<\/p>\n

As one example, he advocates \u201coutsulation\u201d for older structures, defined as adding exterior insulating panels to save heat. Courtesy of the European Union, my Irish in-laws recently had their house \u201cwrapped\u201d and saw their heating bills plummet.<\/p>\n

His second way is demand-response, which he calls flexiwatts. An example is cycling air conditioners off for 15-30 minutes at a time, a barely noticeable adjustment that cuts demand for peaker-power plants, those big\u00a0emitters<\/a>\u00a0of greenhouse gases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His third way is using renewables more effectively. Diversifying renewables by location and type within a region evens gaps from windless and cloudy weather.<\/p>\n

As for electric cars being a drain on the grid, they will prove to be sources of electricity, he said, as the\u00a0next generation<\/a> batteries will be cheaper and likely have double the storage. Daytime solar stored in vehicles will be bi-directional, spooling out power during peak evening demand.<\/p>\n

Lovins also cites LED lights dramatically cutting the cost of energy. In just a decade, they\u2019ve become 30 times more efficient, 20 times brighter and 10 times cheaper.<\/p>\n

He is quick to admit that an energy gap remains, but he predicts a single-digit gap \u2014 6% \u2014 between what renewables produce and what\u2019s needed. That, he said, can be made up by stored, green hydrogen or ammonia, manufactured from water and air with solar energy, and burned in existing gas plants.<\/p>\n

As for nuclear power plants, he said even the best-case scenarios for the next generation of nuclear generators are at least a decade away and at least eight times more costly than renewables today.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s better to use fast, cheap, and certain rather than slow, costly, and speculative,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Though cutting loose from fossil fuels is a massive undertaking, he said America is on track: \u201cWe are on or ahead of schedule on renewables, with\u00a085%<\/a>\u00a0of net new additions to the grid from renewables, and $1 billion invested in solar in the world daily.\u201d<\/p>\n

For these reasons and more, he sees our energy future as more of what we\u2019re already doing \u2014 only smarter and faster.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hope that he\u2019s right.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range,\u00a0writersontherange.org<\/a>, an independent non-profit that exists to spur lively dialog about the West. He lives in Durango, Colorado.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\nAuthor: Aspen Times<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The experts tell us an energy gap looms. Fossil fuels are phasing out, and solar and wind power can\u2019t produce enough electricity to meet the demand in coming decades. But that\u2019s not the thinking of Amory Lovins, the 76-year-old co-founder of RMI, formerly the Rocky Mountain Institute in western Colorado. A Harvard and Oxford dropout […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2489040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-20 06:45:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2489040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489040\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2489040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2489040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2489040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}