Journal of Appropriate Technology IN AMORY LOVINS on ENERGY.EFFICIENCY, p. 4 NETWORKS REVISITED, p. 20 A.T. REFLECTIONS FROM EUROPE, p. 8 VolumeVI No.2 November 1979 $1.50- No Advertising
... R A I RAIN, as you have probably observed, is in another of its "transitions." As the latest new face around here it's a little peculiar to be the person to fill you all in on what's been going on. I personally have been referring to this summer as my own "mountain moving days." I thought perhaps the chaos would end upon my arrival at the Portland airport but as usual I'd packed ample chaos. There was still the movers to contend with, not an insignificant part of any move. This time the movers did okay until they loaded all of my earthly possessions into a borrowed pickup with a quick release tailgate. That quickly released two of my favorites, the carved oak bed that had finally gotten me up from a mattress on the floor, and the .hand bevelled leaded glass window that was going to either pay for my college education someday or serve as the natural convective access from my dream greenhouse to my dream study. All of which happened last week when I'd sold my house in Minnesota and moved here to become a RAIN edi- .. c:: 0 ... ~ .. . ... .. . ~ ~ VJ . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... . N D R tor. The move was an effort to recycle myself out of the "hands on" a.t. role I was in and into a more reflective one. This change comes after three years in weatherization and solar training projects at the Center for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis. Now that I'm here I'm finding that I'll still want to keep my hand in the training area while concentrating on getting out the magazine each month. We'll see.... Some of the other changes are in the works and will be showing up in the Staff/Contributors box. Most of the older RAIN people are still hovering around responsibly seeing to the bits and pieces of information that need to be handed over to new RAIN people. As a "new RAIN person" I'm grateful for this "technotransfer" guidance and supporting input from everyone. On the other hand, the old staff is really trying to take less responsibility for the day-to-day workings here and new staff is needed. We're looking for people with networking know-how and an ability to read, write and provide some judgement about .what's being written and practiced around the country. We have a tremendous collection of the materials that have been reviewed and the magazines we exchange·with, all of which needs RAIN 0 p s to be organized into a usable resource. We need someone who can shepherd materials into pages, and pages off to printers. The hours are odd, the pay negligible (see "salaries" in the annual financial statement) and the work creative, challenging, chummy, etc. Send resumes, notes, letters, examples of your writing, all of the above, some of the above.... We'd love to have you. Whenever I see a financial statement in a magazine I'm perhaps perversely curious ... balancing budgets is not my forte. The last time we printed one it was accompanied by a plea for help. This time we're proud to say we're solvent and can, if not rest assured, at least catch our breaths. We're all a little stunned to see in print the real amount of total salaries we pay ourselves. Perhaps with this new security we can·afford a little raise? We also need to keep hearing from you, certainly if you're planning a conference or event of some sort. I'm tempted to slide into a lyrical applause for Portland, this new home that I love, but I'm told that we're not supposed to talk about it or we'll be deluged by "growth." So, yes it rains a lot in Portland and you probably wouldn't like it. -CC Journal ofAppropriate Technology I,,. RAIN is a national information access journal making connections for people seeking n:iore simJ?le and sati_sfying lifestyle~, working to make their communities and regions economically self-reliant, building a sooety that 1s durable, Just an_d ecologically sound. RA.IN STAFF Carlotta Collette Pauline Deppen Mark Roseland Del Greenfield Yale Lansky Debra Whitelaw Jill Stapleton-Layout Steve Johnson CONTRIBUTORS Tom Bender Tad Mu.tersbaugh Phil Conti Steven Ames Typ esetting: Irish Setter • Printing: Times Litho Cover: Ancil Nance RAIN, Journal of Appropriate Technology, is published 10 times yearly by the Rain Umbrella, Inc., a n?n-profit corporation located at 2270 N.W. Irving, Portland, Oregon 97210. Telephone: 503-227-5110. Copyright© 1979 Ram Umbrella, Inc. No part may be reprinted without written permission. • Page 2 RAIN November 1979 ...
II WEAPONRY ~ The Price of Defense, The Boston Study Group, 1979, $15 from: New York Times Boo_k Co. 3 P;:irk Avenue New York, NY 10016 For a society living more than 30 years in the ominous shadow of our own stockpile of more than 30,000 nuclear warheads and a global military escalation fueled in large part by our own government's gigantic and almost uncontroll~ed "defense" budget, this book comes as a shining ray of hope. It is .comparable in the military area to Lovins' Soft Energy Paths in the energy field or Lappe's and Collins's Food First in exposing the myths of our agricultural/food practices. Together, these three books are additionally encouraging, in that they show that networks of knowleqgeable and concerned· people exist in every area of our culture- be it health, education, transportation, law or whatever-that can winnow through the myths of our current practices, assemble a viable vision of saner and wiser ways, and give us the basic ammunition to open up public discussion and action to refocus our activities in more benign ways. The Price ofDefense shows pretty convincinglx that the majority of our ,"defense" spending is bogus-that the only real military risk our country is exposed to is nuclear missiles, and that we have admitted no possible defense against them. It shows how our excessive military power encourages us to use it in offense-ive ways abroad·, and shows the total and face-risking vulnerability of small, shoulder-launl:hed "intelligent" anti-ship/plane/tank ~issiles. Such RA IN cheap weapons can, and have in Vietnam and the Israeli wars, regularly erase y;nulti-million or -billion dollar equipment. It shows that Pearl Harbor, one of the flags always waved to rally us to greater military expenditures, was actually a major error by the Japaneseit eliminated only obsolete types of ships, and galvanized the American will into action against them much more powerfully than if it had never happened. The BSG show one of those epochmaking major shifts of military advantage occurring today-now from the wealthy to those with popular support; from those with elaborate armaments to those with a sound base in human rights; from offen~ive to defense advantage of action. Our little group in the Oregon governor's office shocked Pentagon officials five years ago when we confidently asserted that the U.S. no longer had the energetics to support a sustained foreign war. But that was peanuts compared to1what these good people so cal!DlY ai:id clearly lay out for us. They show, in conclusion, how we can actually strengthen our real defensive capabilities, reduce the provocativeness of our present military capabilities, and simultaneously reduce our military expenditures by 40 percent. A big order, well filled. Read and act. -TB () rn en en "Anti-Submarine Warfare," Robert Aldridge, Co-Evolution Quarterly, Fall 1979, $3.50 from: Box 428 Sausalito, CA 94965 Aldridge details one of the current examples of the provocative nature of our military expenditure's and the escalation they cause in the threat of catastrophic war. It has been repeatedly shown that our military research efforts have conjured up new horrors unopposed by related action by Russia or other countries, but which result in 4 or 5 years time in the development of countervailing capabilities by these countries. Our emerging capabilities, through precise tracking of the Russian missile submarine fleet, to destroy the Soviet ability to retaliate against a nuclear assault by our country threatens to destabilize the precarious balance of deterence upon which our standoff has depended. "It is ironic that a U.S. disarming first strike capability, regardless of intentions, could motivate the USSR to attack first. An l,mstable condition could come about d\lring some future international crisis when Soviet leaders might feel tempted to launclit their weapons before they lose them. Thus could be the beginning of World War III." -TB November 1979 RAIN Page 3
i. I I It's nice to have Amory Lovins, ubiquitous purveyor ofsoft energy paths, back in these pages again. Of course, his basic message- that we ccin indeed make the transition to a renewable energy society- has not changed. ,What has changed is the nature of the resistance to this inevitability-and the fact, as some see it, that we are already on our way. With this in mind, it might be timely to turn our attention from distant visions to those more immediate, most cost-effective steps in this transition: energy efficiency and conservation. As Amory's following remarks, excerpted from bis August speech to the Community Rerzewable Energy Systems conference in Boulder, make quite clear, we are only beginning to realize how much energy can be saved on an aggregate level by finetuning hundreds of energy conserving measures across the board. These first steps down the soft path can effectively forestall more nuke/synfuel follies, and give us the lead time we need to bring the good stuff on line. Here is Dr. Lovins GETTING EFFICIENT at his most inimitable! -SA by Amory Lqvins ... How much work can we wring from each unit of energy that is delivered to us? The conventional wisdom says that insulating our houses better, designing better appliances, better cars, better machinery in factories, we can save something like 20 to 40 percent of our energy and be just as well off, and indeed, that this is cheaper than new energy supply. I think this is pretty much well known. However, the conven- - tional wisdom is wrong. It comes from not looking quite carefully enough at how great the opportunities are for using energy more efficiently through what are called "technica_l fixes"-that i~, technical measures which are now economic by normal criteria, use today's (or quite often 1870's) technologies and have no significant effect on lifestyles. These are conventional measures.like better insulation., more efficient cars, and the like-except that if you look very carefully at • the best state-of-the-art right now, you find vastly greater opportunities for saving than anybody knew were there. This is something we have learned only within the past year. One of the first people to show this was Gerald Leach, who with his colleagues in England, diq a big study for the Ford Foundation (see below), in which they showed in quite a ratproof way ·that 1f you look carefully at more than 400 sectors of British energy use, and you use that energy more efficiently to do the same jobs, using conservation measures that are cheaper than present cheap North Sea gas, you can treble the ,energy efficiency of that country. You can do three times as much work, have three times the GNP, using the same amount of energy as now-or actually a little bit less. A colleague of mine has since dug into the numbers a little more thoroughly. He wanted originally to find out what would happen if you used conservation measures which, althoµgh they may not be cheaper than North Sea gas, are cheaper than the synthetic gas or new power stations Britain would otherwise have to use to replace the North Sea oil and gas that is going to run out. He found twice as much saving, a factor of 6. (This i5,actually what is repre~e_nted in Figure 1., We have assumed here a trebling of the Bnt1sh Gross Domestic Product. I happ~n to think that is spherically senseless-it Page 4 RAIN November 1979 makes·no sense no matter whi~h way you look at it-bµt I am going to assume it anyway to save argument.) Yet at the same time, the total energy used to treble econbmic activity, in the conventional heavy-industrial sense, drops by half-just through technical fixes. We have since had similar results from a number of other countries, for example West Germany, which is already considered more energy'-efficient chan the United States. I think the lesson is that when we start looking at hundreds of individual little energy uses through the economy the opportunities for saving add up in ways we never expected. Of course, there has also been very ·rapid technical progress. We now know, for example, how to make an economically and aesthetically attractive house in essentially any climate which does not tak~ any energy to heat. We know how to A "Soft" Energy Path for the United Kingdom, David Olivier, Earth Resources Research, Ltd., 11/78 (Preliminary). , Figure 1. make cars, quite straightforwardly, that are five times as efficient as the average American car, and we can do a lot better than that without pushing technology very hard.
Let me take as my text for a moment your refrigerator b_ecaus7 it is a nice graphic example. Around the end of World War II your refrigerator motor was probably 80- or 90-odd percent efficient and it sat on top. Nowadays the motor is maybe 50 or 60 percent efficient, probably because the price of electricity to your house has dropped severalfold since then, and the motor sits underneath so its heat goes up into the box. Therefor_e·, your refrigerator probably spends about half of its effort taking away the heat of its own motor! Then the manufacturers have skimped on_insulationit's gotten thinner and thinner because they've tried to make the inside pretty big compared to the outside. (I guess if you gave them a little longer, the inside would get bigger than the outside.) Because of that, and because it is designed so that when you op.en the door all the cold air falls out, it frosts up. So your refrigerator probably has in it .a lot of electric space heaters which go on now and then to defrost it. And it prob- , ably has electric heaters around the door to keep the gasket from sticking because they cannot be bothered to use a Teflon coating. Then the heat gets pumped out the back into a kind of radiator which is usually press_ed right int'o that • thin insulation to help the heat get back inside as fast as possible. And then the refrigerator is probably installed next to your stove or dishwasher, so when they go on, it goes on. It really is hard to think of a better way to waste energy, Now if you design the thing properly, it will keep the same amount of food just as cold, and conveniently, using only a sixth as much electricity as now. (I just had a report from an engineering undergraduate in Santa Barbara who made a refrigerator just for fun that was four times as efficient as the best on the market-then he listed all the nifty things he could have done to make it even better. ) There is an extra capital cost for this factor of six, but you get ·it back in about three years from your electricity savings. Highly cost effe.ctive! These are the kinds of measures I am talking about, throughout the economy-not j-µst in the household, and they add up to a very large saving indeed. You should n0te that I am not assuming here any significant changes in how we live, where we live, or how to organize our society. I am assuming traditional industrial growth for people who think that is a good idea. If you happen to think that today's values or institutions are imperfect, as I am told some people do, • then of course you are welcome to assume some mixture of technical and social change would make this all easier. But I have not done that. I have tried to keep my personal preferences separate from my analytic assumptions. I suspect that I have underestimated the scope for purely technical savings in energy. In fact, to nail that down, I thought it would be fun to make up a little sociological matrix, showing how much total energy various people throughout this country would need in·the year 2000 (Table 1). It is measured in crazy units called "quads" (one quadrillion BTV, per year. We now use about 78 quads per year in the _United States. I have classified these forecasts according to when they were made and according to who made them. One of the Huxleys once said that all knowledge is~fated to start as heresy and end as superstitionso I have used those categories wjth "conventional wisdom" in between. Then there_is a pre-heretical phase called "beyond • the pale," which means nobody even reads it. EVOLUTION OF APPROXIMATE FORECASTS OF U.S. PRIMARY ENERGY DEMAND IN THE YEAR 200Q (in Quads/Year= 1015 BTU/Year) (1972-8 Rate: Ca. 75 Q/Y) SOURCE OF FORECAST YEAR ConvenOF Beyond tional FORE- The Pale Heresy Wisdom Superstition CAST 125 140 160 190 1972 Lovins Sierra Club ·AEC BuMines, FPC 100 124 140 160 1974 EPP (ZEG) EPP (TF) ERDA EEi, EPRI 75 89-95 124 140 1976 Lovins von Hippel Lovins ERDA EEi Williams_ For. Aff. 33 63-77 96-101 124 1978 Steinhart CONAES CONAES Lapp (for 2050) Cons. & (III) Dem. Panel IEA (for 2010) (Weinberg) (I) (II) Table 1. Back in 1972, before the embargo, people like me were talking about 125 quads as being ample in the year 2000. The Sierra Club was heretically suggesting 140, but that was unheard of because the old Atomic Energy Commission was secure in the conventional wisdom of 160. Other federal agencies were up around 190. I think Exxon was around 230. It's all pretty ambitious compared to the present 7 5 or so:· Those were in the days when energy planning was done by an army of chimpanzees armed with semi-log paper and ·rulers. Then in 1974 we had the embargo, of course, and the Ford Energy Policy Project, whose 100-quad scenario was not taken very seriously, but whose 124 technical fix was because it was so much lower than the Energy Research and Development Administration's 140 or the utilities' 160-odd. Then in 1976 in Foreign Affairs I was sugg~sting 95 would be ample, but in speeches I was already saying that 75 made much better use of the technical fixes which by then we·had • already discovered. Some Princeto'n analysts came up with a solid 89. By then ERDA had come' down from 140 to 124- • they had discovered technical fixes. Edisqn Electric Institute had dropped down to 140-they had discovered price elas~·· ticity. • By 1978 John Steinhart of Wisconsin, for the year 2050, was talking about 33 quads. If you read Science magazine in April 1978, you would have seen the very distinguished De; mand Panel of the CONAES Study of the National Aca<;lemy of Sciences giving some scenarios for the year 2010, including 77 and 96 quads, which were pur.e technical fixes, and 63, • which could have been. Alvin Weinberg, the grandaddy of the nuclear business, was by then happy with 101, and even Ralph Lapp was happy with 124. • . This matrix even turns out to have some predictive power because about 6 months after I made it, Dr. Schlesinger gave· ' his latest forecast with what now lo'oks like a rather modest oil price of $32 per barrel. He came out with 95 quads. In November 1979 RAIN Page 5
continued o~her words, the number which was two years earlier greeted with hqwls of derision when I put it in Foreign Affairs was then the official forecast in 1978. Indeed, the low oil price forec~st'., \vhich I will stick in the right-hand column because they require supernatural intervention, averages ·to 123, and those numbers are right where they ought to be. long~term United.States energy need around 10 or 15 quads. I do take that seriously now. I now think that my old forecasts are enormously inflated.,Indeed, as I read review drafts of papers people are doing, it seems that the 1989 numbers . are going to come out exactly where they ought to according to my little predictions here. Now w_hat I would like you to observe is that this is a diagonal °:~tnx. Every two years you see things are neatly popping down mto the next column! We have nowhere hit bottom yet. For example, we just found that if we had a really energyconscious materials policy, just that would roughly treble our national ·energy efficiency. We did not know that, so it is not If you take seriously some of the latest European 'results and apply them to American conditions, then. we ought to be levelling off at a long-term U.S. energy need aroun'd 10·or 15 quads. I do take that seriously now ... in any of these numbers. And if you take seriously some of the latest European results, especially from Britain and Germany, and apply them to American conditions, then in about another two rows people ought to be levelling off pretty much at a Clearly, if our long-term energy needs are going to level·off and come down a bit, rather than zooming upward, then we Amory Lovins is not the only one talking about the possibilities evolving out of increased end-use energy efficiency. A string.ofnew studies coming from different perspectives are starting to line up impressive evidence, sector by sector, that upping the productivity ofenergy used - through improved industrial processes, higher mileage cars and trucks, better building insulation, improved appliances, and so on - we can greatly reduce (and in some cases eliminate) our dependency on depletable or dangerous sources of new energy with little impact on economic activity and lifestyles, and without having to beg the moral equivalencies of war or crisis. These conclusions are well-grounded in the 5 years of measurable changes that have already taken place since the Arab oil embargo-changes which have occured largely in and of their owneconomic logic. As tbe following reports conclude, the room for further improvements is vast. -SA • "Could Britain Be Energy Self-Sufficient by 2000? New Report Stresses Efficiency Gains, Better Forecasting, Reduced ,Nuclear," in Soft Energy Notes, May 1979, $2..50 from: International PrQject for Soft Energy_Paths 124 Spear St. San Francisco, CA 94105 A Low Energy Strategy for the United Kingdom (1979, Gerald Leach et al), aptly summarized in Soft Energy Notes, May '79, is most notable in that its findings are based on an extremely detailed breakdown of final energy use in the UK by different fuels, types of appliance and end-use purpose - in all, almost 400 categories. Applying efficiency estimates for existing and new equipment, the Leach team then scales each sector and use to an expanded economy and population, assuming improved living standards, and finds Page 6 RAIN November 1979 RESOURCES ----------~--- that major growth can be sustained for the next 5 0 years with less primary energy use in 2025 than today. Specifi- ·cally, coal use would require only moderate increases, oil and gas use could be limited to North Sea reserves, and Britian's nuclear program and breeder reactor development could be virtually abandoned. To help prove its point, the Leach study assumes conservatively that renewables will make no significant contribution until the year 2000. Low Energy Strategy concludes that two major policy level approaches are necessary to make it all happen: 1) government would need to set various energy efficiency and performance standards, and 2) consumers of all kinds would need to be adequately informed of "best practise" technologies. No measures would be required that have any effect on freedom of choice. This . study is also av_ailable in' its entirety, $16 postpaid, from: International_Institute for Environment and Development, 10 Percy St;, London W.1, Enghmd. "Interim Report: Low Energy Scenario for Great Britain," Soft Energy Paths VII, Volume II, July 1979, $2.50 from: International Project for Soft Energy Paths 124 Spear S't. San Francisco, CA 94105 David Olivier's interim report, Low Energy Scenario for the United Kingdom, also mentioned above, is the perfect follow up to the Leach study, demonstrating the _increased p.otential for energy efficiencies when coupled with soft energy sources. Utilizing a sector by sector analysis, Olivier's report takes Leach et al one step further by assuming a major contribution from 'active solar systems, biomass liquid fuels and wind generation. What he finds is 1 that two-thirds or more of the U.K. 's total fuel demands in the year 2025 can be met by ren_ewables. In that same time .frame, coal and natural gas consumption could drop by 7 s· percent, oil needs could be,reduced by 90 percent, and uranium-too bad- could be cut 100 percent by th~ year 2000. Low Energy Scenario thus calculates total British primary energy demand would drop ·so percent while economic growth trebles. In other words, through a combination of conservation, renewable energy • sources and a variety of cost-effective technical advancements, primary energy ' use is capable of declining by a factor of six relative to total economic activity. This interim analysis in Soft Energy Notes examines the potential delivered energy improvements by five major energy use sectors: domestic, commercial, industrial, agricultural and transportation. A complete version, when available, will be announced by SEN. The Easy Path Energy Plan, by Vince Taylor, September 1979, 41 pp., from: Union of Concerned Scientists 1208 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge,,MA 02138 Upon examining our own situation, The Easy Path Energy Plan- the first study to me_asure-the contribution of efficiency improvements in U.S. energy ' supply - projects the same kind of results: by reinforcing the present trends toward improved efficiency, the United States could begin reducing oil imports, cut back on domestic production of • _same, and halve its dependency on nuclear power by 1985 - all without synthetic fuels. 1 Dr. Vince Taylor says the "remarkable revolution" of energy efficiency is alre.ady under way. From 1973 to 1978, energy use in America grew only 4 percent, compared to 22 percent in the five years previous, of which only a small, part of the difference was accounted for
could do a lot more a lot faster with soft technologies than we used to think we could. . . . • • Now I do not think you will find any Uepirtment of Energy publication which compares the capi_tal int~nsity of all the alternatives-including soft technolog1es-w1th each other. They like to play a little shell game with the costs. The way it works is that they take things they like to build, like different kinds of power stations and synthetic fuel plants, and compare their costs with each other. Then when it comes to the things they have not historically been so excited about, like conservation and solar, they will compare those costs not with the competing hard technotogies, but instead with t~e historically cheap (and heavily subsidized) oil and gas which we are running out of, and wh1ch all of these things are therefore meant to replace. So the Department says oil costs us, depending on wryere it comes from, say $10 or $_20 a b~;rel- $20 to $25 for imports, and we will therefore reJect as uneconomic" the more expensive kinds of soft technologysome kinds of biomass fuels and solar heat which might coµie in at $20 to $25 a barrel-because they might cost more than the oil. But at the same time, we are asked to put zillions of dollars,of your money into subsidies for synthetic fuels at • $30 to $60 a barrel, or nuclear electricity at $100 a barrel. · That is just nuts, or more formally, that leads to a misalloca- , tion. ! . by lower economic growth. Through a variety of energy saving techniques, businesses and consumers saved an equivalent of 3.8 million barrels per day of additional supply in 1978 - compared to the 1.45 million barrels per'day equivalent actual increase in:energy supply. In pther words, efficiency improvements contributed 2½ times as much to economic growth as did expanded oil imports, nuclear power and coal production combined. Without these improvements, oil imports would have grown 3 times as fast as they did Clearly, what we ought to be doing is to compare all our investments with each other, not some with each other and some with the cheap oil and gas. And when we do tha,t, W$! find that the cheapest things to do are the efficiency improvements, then the soft technologies, then, quite a way after that, the synthetic fuels, and worst of all the central electric systems. Our national energy policy has, of course, taken it in reverse order-worst buys fir.st. We are now in Phase Two: we hav~ gone from power stations to synthetics_. We have not yet discovered•the relatively cheap ways to do 1t. (including rate structure reform) and 4) fuel switching (using gas surpluses for conversions away from oil). In addition to lower overall energy use by 1985, this plan would avoid costly subsidies and environmental impacts caused by synfuel development, investments in • breeder reactors and fusion devices, forced industrial conversions to coal and forced setting of thermostats. For those interested in current national energy policy questions there could not be a more timely piece of reading. Send one to your congressn:ian. ENERGY CONSUMPTION TRENDS: BY ENERGY TYPE perspective from which it makes its assumptions. A "least cost" strategy simply means the 'performance of required energy services at minimum cost to consumers. As energy policy it implies the operation of a fairly traditional market system which allows for a diversity of competitive technologies to compete against each other. Sound like business as usual? No, says author Roger Sant, the United States through its energy policies has tended to treat energy as a diminishing domestic commodity, rather than trying to unleash new competitive forces and multiply consumer chbices. Had energy supply ,and equipment been structured to minimize consumer costs over the last 10 to 15 years, the per capita cost for the same amount of energy services in 1978 could have been reduced by 1 7 percent. In addition, this situation would hav,e involved a significantly different mix of energy sources, with the overall shares of oil, coal (non-electric) and purchased electricity reduced by 28, 34 and 43 percent respectively. Efficiency technologies, on the other hand, would have captured 22 percent more (or nearly one-third) of the energy service market. What prevepted this were things like heavy government R&D focused on increasing utility-supplied electricity, • forced industrial conversion to coal, and lack of government attention focused NEP II (approx.) PRESENT .THE .' 91.7 TRENDS EASY PATH 81.9 77.5 2.9 21.3 75.9 NUCLEAR 1.6 3.0 17.9 3.2 HYDRO 14.0 18.3 COAL 19.8 22.0 17.8 20..0 GAS 37.8. 38.7 38.1 32.8 OIL 1978 ·1995 PROJECTIONS PRIMARY ENERGY PRODUCTl,ON (Quads per year) between 197 ~ and 1978. Interestingly, 61 percent of increased efficiency came from industrial refinements, 22 percent from higher motor vehicle mileage and 17 percent from improved residential and commercial heating and appliances. The Easy Path Plan proposes that this trend be accelerated by selected legislative action in four areas: 1) motor ' vehicle efficiency, 2) building heating efficiency, 3) electric usage efficiency The Least-Cost Energy Strategy, Minimizing co·nsumer Costs Through Competition, Roger W. Sant, 1979, 50 pp.,, from: The Energy Productivity Center Mellon Institute Arlington, VA A variation on the efficiency theme, The Least Cost Energy Strategy is most fascinating because of the economic on reducing oil consumption in the building sector - as opposed to transportation and industry. Not surprisingly Sant is down on ~nergy price controls - but, in part, because they put new options, such as solar hot water heating, and efficiency applications from cogeneration to storm windows, at a competitive disadvantage. In fact, he says, those opting for a clean enviornment and the soft energy path should find that the "least cost" approach serves their interests well. An interesting argument. I'll have to think about it. ■ November 1979 RAIN Page 7
REFLECTIONS FROM THE OTHER SIDE • Getting a handle on European developments in app,ropriate technology (J.nd related areas is not easy. The telliiigfact is that news ofgood alternatives from the other end of the Atlantic is still mostly facilitated by word of mouth, occasional traveling emissaries, or small notations in specialized journals. When an exciting letter on solar greenhouses arrives from Finland, or a German recycler drops out of the lilue to talk about source separation, the immediate reaction is one of pleasant surprise. Ifyou put your ear to.the ground long enough, however, you do begin to get a picture of all kinds of Europeans working to create a sustainable future for their continent. It's exciting- like tuning into something just starting to take shape-but the who and where of it all is still fuzzy. There's a whole lot ofcommunic_ating that needs to be going on. Some might ask., Why bother? It's a good question. People dedicated to the resurgence of neighborhoods, local economies and so on, should be skeptical ab_out zoomin~ out to some international level offocus.It s_eems ljke the "global village" syndrome at_best-a.t. jet-setting. But if my notion ofnetworking serves me right, the reasons to bother are plenty. Europe is closer to home than W/? think. The nations of our two continents, "heavily industrialized with largely capitalist economies, find themselves in similar predicaments. Both continents are overdeveloped and face changing prospects in a world of new limitations- and real solutions will probably come from similar actions. From Europeans now thinking about sustainability, we stand to learn a great deal. And vice versa. Mutually reinfarcing feedback on our visions and successes will help good things happ.en on a local level everywhere- from Liverpool to St. Louis. • A:r: EUROPE ... ---- ~ / ~ / / I I I I Working at Tvind: Cooperation and Renewable Energy The massive 2 megawatt Tvind windmill is unique for a number of reasons: First, it supplies a community of three schools and 800 people with all their electrical and heating needs. The surplus energy is sold to the National Danish' Elec_tric Company. Secondly, the total capital outlay for its construction (about $1 million) came from the pooled salaries of the faculty members at Tvind. Thir_dly, and perhaps most significant, the Danish volunteers in the group that built Tvind had had no· experience in constructing windmills (it's among the first!) and learned through practical experience as they w~r:t along. • I was aware of the Tvind windmill project before arriving in Denmark, and discovering that I could work on the project, decided to stay. For four months I became a part of the windmill team, working on a month-to-month con.tract. The feeling Page 8 RAIN November 1979 \.((' ':, \ \ I I i / 53m of working together with such dedicated men and women was overwhelming. The d_aily work process reflected their high_ level of commitment to cooperative endeavors: each day's planned activities were openly discussed in a general meeting of workers-no tool was picked up until th~re was a consensus around all issues of importance. Needless to say, cohesion among the members ofithe windmill team was strong. It would be extremely difficult to find a comparable cooperative effort by such motivated people anywhere. Tvind's windmill is a remarkable achievement. -Rich Wittrup
'\ '. . , y .I\';' ·, "'l Getting the English Out in the Country That's the goal of WWOOF-Working Weekends on Organic Farms-which operates as a newsletter/exchange, putting pale urbanites who want first-hand experience in organic gardening a_nd farming in touch with rural smallholders who can use help with their labor-intensive operations. A majority of Wwoofers come from the London area and most are in the 2030 age bracket. WWOOF's ·newsletter lists host farms by region and the weekend slots available. From there, Wwoofers make their own connections, with the guarantee of room and board during their working visits and rides to and from the local station. Digging deeper, WWOOF as a network supports the or:ganic agriculture movement and land reform in Britain: Working Weekends on Organic Farms (WWOOF) c/o Bradford Road 19 Lewes, Sussex, England Nordic Activists Eye the Future The dedication and bard work of Scandinavian appropriate technologists is truly inspiring. Excerpted below is a sampling ofthe good thoughts they've shared with us through correspondences in the last year. It does, ~ndeed, sound like we have much in common. "Our vision for a future Denmark is a country consisting of small, more or less self-sufficient communities using renewable sources of energy for small decentralized industries.... Denmark is probably one of the best equipped countries to make that transition to a post-industrial future: almost no big industries and a well-develope.d farming system with relatively small farms. But,'mentally' there is a long way to go...." -Er/and Nielsen, Forerningen Folkets (l)kotek, Denmark "Consider, for example, working with the same objectives in a little, conservative-never a revolution in its history-country, which is dependent'on the 'outside' for just about everything. And-get this-where the goal is to become as over-developed and energy intensive as the USA. Yes, you've already arrived at the top of the curve .. . there's only one way to go, and you have the resources, plenty of room to experiment and a , tradition for trying new ways- pioneering. "But in spite of our differences ... .we have much mo'Te in common and much to gain in exchanging ideas and experiences. 'Networking' as .you call it . .. has given the web for the metamorphosis of.our dying democracies. The parliamentary governing systems have not been able _tQ cope with the most • urgent/vital problems of society.... It 's not so accidental .that so many different grass roots movements have sprung up during thdast 10 to 1 s· years. . .. Genuine participation is not ' replying yes or no to a question, but also finding the relevant questions! "And that's where networking comes in. There are many problems to be solved like the energy one,.but the answers are necessarily bound by many basic considerations which aren't the private domain of experts. The results of our activities are of great importancej but the net result of them in the long run is even more exciting: a self-adjusting society-a decentralized democracy that works."-Floyd K. Stein, Organization for Renewable Energy, Denmark "In _Finland ... large companies and the State are of course'· working on solar energy, biomass, waste-recycling, etc., but without regard for certain difficult accompanying social changes. This would not be so serious were it not for the factthat the 'Alternative' also makes a habit of avoiding discussion of how we achieve the changeover. Alternativists do not usually realize how weak is their movement, how little •influence they have, how hard we must work..... Appropriate technologists have to learn to be much more critical and selective in their enthusiasm. In Finland, I find the greatest hope in the underdeveloped areas, like Lapland and the Baltic·Islands; and amongst the hundreds of crazy, independent inventors and quiet opponents of nuclear power who live on the countryside in this ·tough climate, not in the busy city ac~ivists-who only want to talk, campaign, protest and make demands." -George Woolston, The Greenhouse Collective, _Helsinki, Finland "There are great dangers that the soft energy movement fixes into changing the life of only a small concerned elite and leaves the bulk of society destroying the base of life in this country and continent. The main factor which can keep the movement near the political realities is the active opposition to nuclear technology and other existing fatal tendencies. The other crucial point for the movement is to improve its relations with the working class. In this respect the alternative production movement started by Lucas Aerospace workers is very important and we hope that it will spread to Finland, too." ~Olli Tammilehto, Energy Political.Association~Alternative to Nuclear Power, Helsinki, Finland ' November 1979 RAIN Page 9
Starting where there are differences in our predic~ment is a good jumping-offpoint: Europe, for example, has long adjusted to fewer resources at its disposal, getting by with less ofall those vices ultimately American- malls, monster cars, sprawling suburbs and freeway interchanges. In the framework of much older societies, a kind of culture has evolved that could still be considered a fair alternative to the United States, with its Viennese coffeehouses, the trams and tubes of Munich and Gothenburg, neighborhood markets in London, and other urban amenities. Per capita energy consumption of Europeans ranges far below that of the States~more like our early '60s levels-and many technical 'refinements and efficiency standards, such as with district heating .and thrifty appliances, have been implemented. It may not be "appropriate" in texture and scale, b11;t life in Europe is still a long shot from idling motors at the local Burger King. In this sense, Europe already has a leg up. .• A more extreme version of this perspective could be the ,case of Britain, often cited as the European economy most seriously in decline, where a lack of investment •in new industrial productivity and poor management have reduced its competitive advantage in the world economy. A variation on this theme is that Britain, first to industrialize, is now the first to go post-industrial, almost as if by intention. In the economist's jargon; this basically means a switch away from heavy goods production to a service-oriented economy. Bernard Nossiter, La Rochelle is getting quite a reputation. The site of last year's Community Action in Europe conference, the city has quite a few other claims to fame. Under the guidance of ecologically oriented deputy mayor Michel Crepeau, La Rochelle has implemented comprehensive planning for the future- "l'ecologie dans la vie communale"-witp an emphasis on energy conservation and urban revitalization. Among La Rochelle's programs and achievements: the installation of solar domestic hot water heating on 1,000 publicly owned apartments; implementation of urban recycling-over one-half the citizens of the city now source separate paper and plastic from other disposables, and recycled plastics produce a profit for the city; revamping of inner-city streets into pedestrian walkways, creation of green spaces and exten_sive tree-planti•ng·-the city has a separate budget earmarked for tree-planting which cannot be tapped for other purposes, even during tight ecoPage 10 RAIN November 1979 in his book Britai.n: A Future That Works (Houghton-Mifflin, 1978, 275 pp., $9.95 hardcover), observes that the British are now more'likely to be satisficing as opposed to optimizingpreferring more leisure, the arts, and a cleaner environment to higher incomes and material expansion. Again, it's not an "a. t." view of the world, but does point to some different possibilities. It's probably no coincidence that some of the most notable European experiments in sustainability, such as the Lucas Aerospace Workers (RAIN, May '79) and the National Centre for Alternative Technology (Aug/Sept '77) are in Britain, nor that the movements for regional autonomy in its hinterlands are alive and kicking. To the interested (admittedly linguistically biased) observer, the explosion ofgrass roqts a.t. groups and activities appears to be the most extensive there. In Europe as a whole, the restrictions of old traditions and ideas make having a philosophic and historical basis for change absolutely necessary-even among "alternative" movements. There's not that all-American talent for just upping and trying new ideas, which is why when it comes right down to innovation, American appropriate technologists seem t9 be leading the way. If one can indulge in an overall descrption of our European counterparts-risky at best-it would be thq,t they are of necessity more political-as-witnessed in their diversity of ecology-type parties and mass-based anti-nuclear movements. Yet their many efforts manage to reflect the high denomic times; and an innovative program which permits the free use of several hundred municipally owned bicycles by city residents, to lessen traffic on La Rochelle's streets and save energy. An overall emphasis of Mayor Crepeau's programs are to revitalize and preserve the city and its cultu_ral heritage. Les Velos a la Rochelle (The Bicycles of La Rochelle), 49 pp., December 1978, from: Centre d'Etudes des Transports Urbains 46 Avenue Aristide Briand 92223 Bagneux, France L'Ecologie dans la Vie Communale, Politique et experience de La Rochelle, 8 pp., from: Michel Crepeau, 'Depute-Maire 3 Rue St. Come 17000 La Rochelle, France
gree of national and even regi.onal differences on that continent. According to one observer, French activists seem to be the more theoretical- chiefl,y concerned with changing government as the single greatest barrier to implementing new ideas. But when a government acts, as in La Rochelle, amazing things can happen. German and Austrian a.t. people are more hardware-oriented, but feel very repressed by government and tend to tie into neo-Marxist perspectives. The German-language alternative catalogues are widely respected as among the most comprehensive resources for appropriate technology in Europe. The Scandinavians appear to be more practical about getting things done, just going ahead and doing it without necessarily having government sponsorship or sanction. Their apparent skill at "process" and democratic decision-making has helped give rise to such inspiring projects as the student-built wind generator at Tvind School (RAIN Jan. '78) and the Danish-instigated Community Action in Europe, a true international network linking grassroots change groups across the continent. Iriterestingly, these observations-general as they are- seem to find resonant parallels among a.t. doers in our country, • from the need to broaden the political appeal of our strategies to trying to avoid the stifling effect of large institutions in implementing them. Another theme from Europe that sounds familiar came up at the recent United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development in A Rural Community in Europe 2000 The sum result of an inter-European planning study filling some twenty volumes, Europe 2000 was drawn together by an international team ofacademics, managers and forecasters. Yet, its transitional ideology leans heavily on Schumacher, Illich and Robert Pirsig. In itself, it may be a sign of change to come. Consider the following speculations: "One typical European family of the year 2000-we can call them the Dumills or the Deuxmilles or the Zweitsausends-live in a converted 18th century farmhouse on the edge of a hill area between 70 and 150 kilometers from a major ~ity . .. with the aid of a government grant under the EEC Energy Conservation Act of 1982, our family has converted it into a Low Energy Living Unit. They have further insulated it to reduce heat loss. They have installed a windmill for electric power, though they can still draw from the electric grid.... The farm is one of a group forming a small rural hamlet. It is occupied by a number of families that moved into them and reoccupied them after they were abandoned in the late 1950s, during the great age of European agricultural depopulation.... To speak of families, though, gives a wrong impression. Many of the children have broken away during adolescence and have joined other groupings, sometimes with other adults, sometimes with each other. The main point is that each person has a number of primary affinities: with a blood-related group, with a work group, with one or more groups of like-minded people.. . . " . . . During the day almost every member of every living group is involved in some kind of work: this applies to the youngest and the oldest in the community... . The critical point about these groups, and about the whole society, is the extreme flexibility of roles. People do not follow lifetime careers. Very few do just one job from nine to five. Instead, people mix different roles.... Most of these jobs can be done locally. There are a couple of distinguished restaurants which employ a score of chefs; there is a research institute serving as an input channel to the Open University of Europe; there are a great variety of small craft workshops which work up wool, leather, locally smelted metals and a variety of other indigenous materials ... the big multinational companies have decentralized many of their operations to small workshop units Vienna, where a series of events were held as part ofan alternative f arum organized in large part by European a. t. groups. While the official conference was considered by many to be a failure, there were good exchanges to be had between representatives of non-governmental organizations and the a.t. people on soft energy paths, self-help housing, low-cost transportation and more. Yet, true to its title, the alternative forum was.reported as coming over much too late-'60s-hippie. It looks as if our counterparts, too, may have something to learn in sorting out the difference between New Age and old hat, The range ofgood things happening in Europe are too broad and deep to be so simply tagged. The fallowing short pieces attempt to give a hint of that diversity as a way of opening up our reflections on the other side. From the grounded observations of Nordic activists to the curiously appropriate visions of a pan-European planning forecast, it's apparent the continent is rich in change. But there's work to be done in bringing out the details. I'm reminded of an earnest Dane who recently contacted RAIN concerning a visit Stateside to learn about U.S. renewable energy developments. As it turns out, his itinerary is two months long! We should be doing the same. -Steven Ames Thanks to Gregg Shadduck, Bill Ellis, Peter Lundberg and Richard Lee Stevens. Coming Up: Access to groups and resources. Contributions? Send ASAP. consisting of between ten and fifty people, which are given a great deal of autonomy.... Most of them produce goods of high quality and great durability which is indeed required under the EEC Industrial Quality Law of 1992.... " ... Most members of the community do some work on the farms, especially at peak periods such as harvest, when there is a general custom that other work stops. Farming in an area like this is necessarily mixed farming in that it is quite laborintensive, so that overall more people work on farms in the year 2000 than in 1976.... Such a dispersed rural pattern of life, it might be thought, must place big demands on resources for transportation. But those demands have been limited in a number of ways. First, because of the varied character of the rural population, it is able to satisfy so many more of its social and cultural needs locally. Secondly, the development of information technology has been so rapid that many needs are met in this way without having to travel at all. ... Thirdly, because the age of expensive energy has created its own response in the form of more energy-conserving vehicles and organizational arrangements. To move about locally, most villagers use small mopeds in which the motor is used only as a supplementary device. To move longer distances, they rely on a system of shared rides whereby anyone leaving the village is under obligation to offer seats in his car, truck or van. In return he receives tickets for a national lottery.... In this way, Europe 2000 actually manages to generate more personkilometers of travel than the Europe of 1976 with fewer energy demands. " ... Perhaps the most striking change about this society is that it marks a partial return to the extended family, or caring group, of earlier ages. It is in a real sense a community. Within it, very many more tasks are performed by people simply as members of the community, often on a part-time basis, without the need for exclusive professionalism. ... Roles are less well-defined; people are again generalists rather than specialists . . . . " Europe 2000, edited by Peter Hall, 1977, 274 pp., 12 pounds hardcover, from: Duckworth, Ltd. The Old Piano Factory 43 Gloucester Crescent London NWl, England November 1979 RAIN Page 11
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