Page 4 RAIN December 1976 THE SECON·D LAW OF TMERMODVNAMICSnSAYS CUTTING BUTTER WITH A NUCLEAR-ELECTRIC B~HAINSAW DOESN'T AND HAS MAKE SENSE IS ~ GOT To·,STOP We keep telling you that Amory Lovins is someone all of you out there ought to begin paying attention to. I first perked up my ears to him and got deep into his work at the '7 5 "Limits · to Growth" conference in Houston, Texas. Ther~ we were, in the heart of the fossil-fueled dinosaur, the deep-carpeted (petroleum-based), plush-seated, Woodlands resort and meeting center ... and Amory was listening intently to Harry Bovay, board chairman of Bovay Engineers1 engineer emeritus and fellow p>anelist, as Harry condescendingly explained why nuclear electricity was the only way to go. But the match was a bit unfair, for Harry was unwittingly supplying Amory with all the facts and figures he needed to produce a withering . return volley. Quick as a flash, Amory drew his pocket calculator, took aim at the dinosaur, and shot it with his own data. A standing-room-only crowd watched Harry's head roll; figuratively, and turn beet-red, literally, and burst into cheers. For it was a modern David versus Goliath, an·d we enjoyed it immensely. · ·; • Amory's papers are well-referenced, as you would expect. Beyond that, the references themselves are often minor gems of logic and human concern that others should follow up on. But what many'Lovins-watchers relish most is the way Amory gently arrays the truth in unavoi9able simplicity. He lets his opponent's claims reveal themselves in their full absurdity ... "Relax," he says, "Ready Killer-Watt has no clothes." "Scale, Centralization, and Electrification itt Energy Systems," Amory's latest effort at energy common sense, was delivered at the .October 20-21, 1976, Future·Strategies for Energy Development symposium held at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. If you've read his earlier works which we told you about in the Oct. '76 RAIN (p. 18), "I;:nergy Strategy: The Road Not Taken," in the mid-Nov. '76 {Vol. 6, No. 20) Not Man Apart or the Oct. '76 Foreign Affairs, and "Exploring Energy-Efficient Futures for Canada," in the June '76 Conserver Society Notes, the·n you're ready for the more technical and full-ofnumbers Oak Ridge paper. It will prove very useful to citizen energy organizations, nuclear plant siting intervenors and antiutility rate hike groups. And it's just plain fun to read. We've selected excerpts from the Oak Ridge paper that might be considered Amory's responses to the Bonneville Power Administration's latest "non-policy trial balloon." BPA may contract in advance to buy power from private utilities who are unable to get loans and sell stock as cheaply or easily as before. With such·secure, federally-.back~d contracts in hand, private power companies can easily get low interest loans for continuing construction of large-scale electrical power plants. This is what Lovins calls the "hard path" of high energy, primary-supply-oriented, high technology, centralized, increasingly electrified, and r.eliant chiefly on depletable coal and uranium resources. If existing centralized systems do not now make economic and engineering.sense, why were they built? There are at least·four rational explanations..First, because objective conditions have chariged drastically' and an indu.stry not noted for quick and imaginative responses ' has been slow to adapt. Second, because centralized energy systems · have been built by institutions in no position to ask whether those systems are the best ·way to perform particular end-use functions-an omission reinforced by our failure to price fuels at long-run marginal • · cost. Third, ,.at times we have ~een pow~rful institutions deliberately .' seeking to reinforce their power by constricting consl,lmer choice, as in the classic monopoly tactics of the early electric utilities or the fight . : against public power and (abroad) private wind machines. Fourth, the' long economic shadow cast by large sunk costs has often led us to seek .. to reinforce past mistakes threu'gh·f?ubsidies, bailouts, $100-billion .., slush funds, etc., thus further .restricting consumer choice, rather than; writing off (or gradually retiring through attrition) ill-conceived infrastructure. Energy decisions are always implemented gradually and incrementally; major shifts take decades. A chief element of strategy, inherent in the soft path, is thus to avoid incremental commitments· , .. of resources to major infrastruc!ure that locks us into particular supply patterns for more decades thereafter.. We are already stuck with gigantic infrastructure that constrains our choices, and nobody is suggesting we wipe the slate clean.: The question is rather what we do at the margin. · What made sense on the up-side of the Hubbert blip, when real costs gf ele,ctricity (both averag~ and marginal) were steadily falling, may neeq to be reversed on the dow·n-side of the bljp and when real costs are ·, rapidly rising with no en~ _in sight. The illogi~ of the ERDA p~sition is this: if we are running out of oitand gas but do not like coal, it is said, we need nuclear power; but if we are not going to have nuclear power, we need other systems that would do what nuclear stations would have done-namdy, deliver GW blocks of electricity. But we should instead be seeking systems that will do what we would have done with the oil and gas if we had had them in the first place. It is the function that interests us, not substituting for reactors. By not structuring the problem in this way, ERDA has so far failed to grasp the immense short- and medium-term opportunities for deploying available technologies for end-use efficiency, cogeneration, fluidized-bed boiler backfits, organic conversion, and extensive solar space heating. The longer this delay, the worse will be our shortages of clean heat and fluid fuels. I hope that the discussion arising from this Symposium will increase ERDA's awareness of the existence of coherent non-electrified ,views of our energy future. In a soft energy path, the technological measure to be achieved can be readily separated from the policy instrument used to encourage it. The former-cogeneration, bioconversion, insulation-is neutral, the latter politically charged. It is the latter only that is likely to irritate us if ill-conceived. But I believe the policy tool can be chosen, accord-
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