A Farewell to Fossil Fuels: Answering the Energy Challenge

In this article published in Foreign Affairs, Amory Lovins describes a U.S. transition from fossil fuels--a blueprint detailed in Reinventing Fire-- that requires pursuing transformational change in automotive efficiency, design of buildings and factories, and the electric system.

 

Reinventing Fire Electricity Sector Methodology

This document provides RMI's methodology for the analysis of the electricity sector in Reinventing Fire.

 

Efficiency and Micropower for Reliable and Resilient Electricity Service: An Intriguing Case-Study from Cuba

Cuba's decrepit electricity grid suffered 188 days of significant blackouts in 2004, 224 in 2005, 3 in 2006, and 0 in 2007. This dramatic improvement was due to a nationwide efficiency program, a crash program of switching to a majority of distributed generation, and reorganizing grid architecture around islandable netted microgrids. This success could be instructive for failing grids like those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Renewables, Micropower, and the Transforming Electricity Landscape

This article, published in RMI's Spring 2010 Solutions Journal, describes micropower's acceleration in taking over the global market long dominated by central thermal stations. This conclusion is supported by RMI's Micropower Database (available to download), which recalculates cogeneration capacity and output from primary data sources.

 

Keeping the Lights on While Transforming Electric Utilities

This article discusses the new electricity paradigm required of electric utilities in the face of climate change, energy security concerns, and disruptive technologies. The new paradigm for utilities is based on energy efficiency, demand response, renewables, energy storage, and distributed generation.

 

Does a Big Economy Need Big Power Plants

Amory Lovins wrote this piece as an invited blog for the New York Times "Freakonomics" column in 2009. In it, he argues for the use of distributed generation and "micropower" instead of big, central power plants.

 

Assessing the Electric Productivity Gap and the U.S. Efficiency Opportunity

This paper explores how effectively the United States has used electricity and compares energy efficiency implementation by state. This paper analyzes state-level electric productivity to determine which states are the most productive with their electricity.

 

Industrial Electric Productivity: Myths, Barriers & Solutions

There is an enormous gap in the electric productivity of the nation. Increasing industrial electric productivity is a significant near-term opportunity that can reduce electricity costs, carbon dioxide emissions per unit of output, and increase profits. RMI believes that increasing industrial electric productivity is an untapped source of value, and is important to the longevity of industry in the United States.

 

Nuclear Power's Competitive Landscape

A hotly debated topic, the present and future state of nuclear power and its competitors are the subject of this presentation by Amory Lovins at RMI2009. This presentation was part of a plenary debate with Robert Rosner entitled, "Nuclear: Fix or Folly?". The accompanying video of the entire debate is available at RMI's Video page.

 

Accelerating Solar Power Adoption: Compounding Cost Savings Across the Value Chain

This paper discusses common barriers to solar power adoption and techniques for getting around those barriers. The authors explain how to overcome the barriers by saving money at multiple points in the solar value chain.

 

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