In spring 2004, when RMI was writing
Winning the Oil Endgame a peer reviewed
roadmap for getting the
United States completely off oil by the
2040s—the government forecast that
oil in 2025 would cost $26 a barrel.
By the time we published the study
in September 2004, the actual price
was nearly $40. Today, with prices
pushing through $110, the solutions to
America’s oil addiction are worth almost
three times as much—conservatively
assuming, as WTOE did, that oil’s
hidden costs to security, climate, etc.
are worth zero. But the cost of WTOE’s
solutions still averages around $15 a
barrel.
RMI is seeking funding over
the next three years to implement
many of these solutions. Michael
Brylawski, Vice President of MOVE
(MObility + Vehicle Efficiency), RMI’s
Transportation Practice, explains that
“With this funding we’ll help ‘wildcat
for efficiency’ and find some really big
‘negabarrels’.” Inspired by the term
“negawatt,” “negabarrel” simply means
oil saved by more efficient use.
With this fundraising effort, RMI is
kicking off the second portion of the
multi-year implementation of Winning
the Oil Endgame: WTOE, Phase II. The
Snowmass-based MOVE team is geared
up to build on, replicate, and exceed the
success of Phase I.
Phase I’s Success
In many ways, WTOE and its
implementation represent what RMI
does best: researching, developing, and
implementing whole-system solutions
led by business for profit. As RMI
Senior Development Officer Ginni
Galicinao points out, “This work is
made possible by individuals and
foundations who were excited about the
potential of WTOE’s Implementation
Plan. WTOE Phase I’s successes were
made possible by both long-time and
new donors, including a challenge
match from an individual donor that
sparked additional funding.”
RMI has calculated that it leveraged the
$3.6 million it received in grants and
donations to implement WTOE Phase I
more than 100-fold through consulting
work, technology investments, and
oil saved by clients’ implementing
WTOE recommendations. For Michael
Brylawski, “It was the biggest social
return on investment you could want as
a philanthropist.”
Th is support allowed MOVE
consultants to break into a variety of
high-leverage areas and use radical
efficiency solutions to advance the ideas
laid out in WTOE (see pp. 4–7).
But that’s not all. WTOE donations
also financed the development of new
technical and business designs that
helped RMI start Bright AutomotiveTM,
a plug-in hybrid electric development
company. Donors supported our
pathfinding work with stakeholders on
innovative policies, such as revenueneutral
feebates, and on lightweight
vehicle safety. WTOE funding helped
RMI partner with a major automaker
to create a “transformational” vehicle
that is now being fleshed out by more
than two hundred engineers. It allowed
RMI to team up with the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory and host
a charrette to catalyze competitive nextgeneration
cellulosic biofuels. And it
helped fund our work with the military,
which is now requiring its future
platforms to account for the “fully
burdened” cost of the fuel transported
to the place of use.1
This work requires extensive research,
documentation, and marketing before a
client engagement or commercialization
step can occur. Just as much as the
initial creation of the intellectual
capital, the implementation process
requires philanthropic support.
WTOE’s successes illustrate how RMI’s
hybrid philanthropy/consultancy
funding model allows us to drive
environmentally beneficial innovation
further, faster, and deeper into the
business world.
Overall, WTOE Phase I achieved
highly gratifying results. Yet the U.S. is
still two-thirds dependent on imported
oil, and world oil consumption is still
rising, especially with growth in India
and China, so we must redouble our
implementation efforts in WTOE
Phase II.
Phase II Projects
Phase II will use four main tools:
high-level influence, entrepreneurial
innovation, corporate engagements,
and public outreach. In Phase I, these
methods were illustrated respectively by
our military work, Bright Automotive,
Wal-Mart and a major automaker, and
Forbes and Wall Street Journal articles,
among others. For Phase II, we have
comparable or better channels in view.
Phase II will continue to emphasize the
automotive and trucking sectors, the
military, and next-generation biofuels,
but will expand our efforts in aviation
and freight.
In addition, although Winning the Oil
Endgame was a book about the U.S.,
RMI wants to expand its outreach
beyond our country, especially to the
developing markets that increasingly
drive growth in global oil use. We
are currently finalizing the Chinese
translation of the book with Tsinghua
University, and looking at tackling
selected foreign projects, especially for
automaking in India and China. Those
two nations have the same percentage of
auto ownership that the United States
had in 1915. The Chinese auto industry
has quadrupled in size in the past six
years, and the cars it produces need to
be far more efficient. MOVE aims to get Indian and Chinese automakers, like
Mahindra, Tata, and Chery, to leapfrog
Western efficiency gains while also
accelerating efficiency efforts at U.S.
automakers so that they remain at the
front of the competition. Early work
along these lines is encouraging, but to
convince automakers to come on board,
MOVE must do significant additional
research using philanthropic funding.
As our experience with Wal-Mart
showed, integrative design could
radically improve heavy trucks’ fuel
efficiency. The MOVE Team is looking
specifically at trailers, which create
much of the aerodynamic drag. MOVE
aims to raise 6-mpg trucks to 12–14
mpg, roughly the fuel efficiency of a
Suburban—not bad for vehicles that
regularly carry 50,000–70,000 pounds.
Aviation is yet another area where the
MOVE Team will apply its growing
experience to help make planes 2–3
times as efficient. With airframe makers
and other major players now knocking
on RMI’s door, the MOVE Team will
add a senior aviation specialist.
The MOVE Team continues to
investigate lightweight shipping
containers and how to make them
thermally efficient (see p. 2). RMI
estimates that containers’ refrigeration
is responsible for 1 percent of all
greenhouse-gas emissions. And the
Team continues to work on the
electrification and efficient design of
ports (see www.rmi.org/sitepages/
pid382.php).
MOVE and WTOE
The MOVE Team (Michael Brylawski,
Lionel Bony, Michael Ogburn,
Stephanie Johns, Laura Schewel,
Mike Simpson, Schuyler Senft-
Grupp, Alok Pradhan, and Laurie
Ramroth; www.rmi.org/sitepages/
pid56.php#MOVE) practices rigorous
program management to assess project
impact and allocate resources. Such
best-practice process discipline should
amplify Phase I’s success. In addition,
unlike conventional consultancies that
seek incremental gains and quick wins,
MOVE and RMI seek transformational
change. What we do is not easy. But it
is vital, urgent, and exhilarating, and we
feel we are uniquely equipped for the
challenge.
“In implementing WTOE, Amory
uses the metaphor of ‘institutional
acupuncture’,” Brylawski notes. “I like
to combine this metaphor with that of
‘efficiency wildcatters.’ Acupuncture
implies that you know exactly what
needs to be done, which is great when
you do. But while our desired outcomes
and vision for WTOE are clear, often
the path to get there is not—and we
must take risks in how we stimulate
industry and other stakeholders into
commercializing transformational
efficiency. For example, we didn’t know
when we started looking into plug-in
hybrids that bringing together Google
and the Turner Foundation with two
traditional industrial giants to launch a
company (Bright Automotive) was the
best way to stimulate the industry, but it
turned out to be a good approach with a
potentially huge efficiency payoff.
“Similarly, wildcatters know in general
where the oil is,” Brylawski adds.
“Though not specifically where to
drill—but the prize is big, so they risk a
lot for potentially huge rewards. That’s
us. We are efficiency wildcatters drilling
for negabarrels. This area is dynamic.
It’s rapidly changing, and we have
ambitious WTOE implementation goals
for the next Phase. Ultimately, we hope
to hit more than a few negagushers.”
If you’re interested in accelerating the Oil
Endgame, please contact developers@rmi.
org
