Efficiency: A Matter of Perspective
The Universal Curmudgeon No. 1. 6
by David B. Sutton, Ph.D.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
“Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy… We would oppose any measure based on the premise that people should ‘do more with less.'” — Dick Cheney
“Up to 75 % of the electricity used in the United States today could be saved with energy efficiency measures, and those measures cost less than the electricity itself.” —Rocky Mountain Institute
I would like to begin my critique of the administration’s Energy Plan by saying to Mr. Cheney, ” Increasing supply may be a sign of loyalty to well-heeled friends and family (they still will be able to occupy first class on the Titanic), but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive, just and sustainable energy policy.” I will contend in today’s column that conservation–this sign of personal virtue, is also an essential element of the public trust that he has sworn to uphold– and is, indeed, the smartest, most immediate, cost-effective and equitable thing we can do.
Responding to the above ‘more with less’ quote from Mr. Cheney, my good friend Gil Friend, President and CEO of Natural Logic, Inc., wrote:
” What is he actually proposing? That we do “less with more?” I can’t think of any another CEO (or any local grocer) who runs their business that way. “Hey, I’ve got a great idea. Let’s spend more money on expenses, produce less product and make less money.”
“On the contrary, leading companies worldwide are driving forcefully in the direction of more with less: wringing more product from a smaller capital plant, more market share from a smaller workforce, and yes, more profit from a smaller energy bill.”
“The history of the 20th century is a history of what Buckminster Fuller called “More with Less-ing.” Without business’ commitment to “more with less” we wouldn’t have transistors, microprocessors, the high tech industry, or the six pound computer on which I’m writing this article. No carbon composites, no Gore-Tex. No CDs, no MP3s. No fiber optics, no wireless telecomm. No lean manufacturing, no high performing companies.” (The New Bottom Line, v 10 n 1 May 3, 2001)
The problem is that these politicians aren’t interested in running the country as a well run, fully accountable company. But I get ahead of myself. What we need to do first is unwrap these concepts of “conservation” and “efficiency.” From which we will readily see differing perspectives informed by very different motivations.
The national debate over energy policy brings renewed focus on conservation. Does it mean “freezing in the dark,” huddled in a Jimmy Carter-model sweater while watching your computer monitor flicker and fade? Or does it constitute relatively painless measures that could negate the need for hundreds of new power plants?
The key here is to understand the psychological distinction between the terms “conservation” and “efficiency” as it has come to influence public opinion.
Conservation has come to mean a change in behavior based on the attitude, ‘Do less to use less.’ Efficiency is the application of technologies and best practices to eliminate waste based on the attitude, ‘Do the same or more with less.’
WHAT IS EFFICIENCY ?
Let’s start with Webster’s New World Dictionary, “efficiency”, “ability to produce a desired effect, product with a minimum of effort, expense, or waste; more generally, output divided by input.” Seems pretty clear, right ? But what is the effect or product desired ? How is the effort, expense or waste to be measured ? In other words, what output divided by what input ?
Now before you accuse me of being ignorant of the very precise ways of measuring technical efficiency and just playing word games, give me time to show that the answers to these questions account for some very real differences in how people treat the notion of efficiency.
Of course, for the ratio of input to output to have any real value both numerator and denominator need to be expressed in the same units.
Energy is the ability to do work. Energy efficiency is the measure of the amount of work done (output) per energy input. Most basically you could say, for instance, that for every unit of energy used in a process we get X units of work out.
Efficiency = Useful work or energy output [divided by] Energy input
For example, an electrical power plant fueled by oil, gas or coal has an efficiency of about 33 % because it takes 3 units of fuel energy to produce one unit of electricity. This is the efficiency of conversion of the original energy source into electricity. (often measured in BTU’s……)
END-USE EFFICIENCY
At the opposite end of the energy system is end-use efficiency. The efficiency of an individual electronic appliance is calculated by how much desired work is supplied by the appliance from each unit of energy input. Considerable increases in end-use efficiency can be accomplished by some very simple engineering design.
A classic example would be the refrigerator. Around the end of WW II the refrigerator motor was probably 80-90 % efficient and it sat on top. Now the appliance is 50-60 % efficient as the motor sits underneath so its heat goes up into the box–therefore your refrigerator probably spends about half of its effort taking away the heat of its own motor! A logical question might be, “why are refrigerators now less efficient then they were years ago?” Answer: because that was the beginning of the era of when those selling electricity have more control over things such as engineering design than those saving energy or advocating good energy-efficient design.
While much of the world has left that era and are redesigning ‘super-efficient’ appliances, it appears that the US is still locked into those dark ages.
Now new designs are available (and I might add in standard use in many European countries) that keep the same amount of food just as cold, and conveniently, using only a sixth as much energy.
WHOLE SYSTEM EFFICIENCY
Yet there are many steps between the production of electricity and its end use.
The energy had to be delivered to the point of use. How efficient was that process — the process of delivering electricity from point of production to point of use? This could be called distribution efficiency.
We are used to hearing that energy facilities must be enormous to take advantage of economies of scale. But we are seldom told about the even greater diseconomies of scale. Big centralized systems with their very extensive distribution networks, represent one of these major diseconomies of scale. For example, out of every dollar that U.S. residential and commercial users of electricity paid to utilities, only about 31c went for electricity; the other 69c went for having it delivered. That is a major diseconomy of centralization.
So there is a pervasive web of energy losses throughout the whole energy delivery system. Whole system efficiency of an energy delivery system should include the entire process from the input costs of locating, extracting, transporting, refining, the original fuel source, the conversion of that original fuel into the energy commodity sold, the distribution of this commodity to the point of use and all the costs in constructing , maintaining and tearing down and disposing of the system’s infrastructure and waste byproducts.
Costs (both economic and energy) come in locating, extracting and refining fuels as well as energy production, distribution and end-use. There is a great energy loss due to the many conversions processes from one form of energy to another, between the power plant and the home or business. In fact, only 10 % of the energy that goes into the typical centralized power plant ends up as useful work.
Since the 1973 energy crisis, an accounting technique has arisen to analyze the efficiency of energy production processes and delivery systems in energy terms, called “net energy analysis.” Net energy analysis expanded the idea of process efficiency outside the traditional boundaries of the technical analyses of an isolated appliance or process.
Just as an energy delivery system can be analyzed for its economic profitability (not very precisely, as you will soon see), it can also be analyzed for its energy profitability. Net energy analysis is an accounting technique which looks at the energy resulting from a particular chain of energy production activities and compares the results to the total amount of energy used to drive that chain or activity.
The measure of energy efficiency for the whole system gives us a percentage of useful energy left, after a fuel is converted and delivered, to do work. In a net energy analysis, we are concerned with the overall efficiency of the entire energy production and delivery system which we can define as a the whole system efficiency, or energy yield ratio:
Energy yield ratio = Energy produced by the system [divided by] Energy costs of operating the system
Net energy analyze have made it very clear, from an energetic point of view, that small scale, decentralized systems that match the quality of fuel source to specific energy need provides the maximum yield. Large scale, centralized power plants, like the administration would build are barely net producers.
END-USE MATCHING
An important, but rarely considered, key to maximizing the efficiency of our energy system is to match the quality of the energy source and its delivery system to the specific work required at point of use.
When we look at energy end-use needs you find that over 50 % of the energy we use is in the form of heat (most of it below the boiling point of water). About 40% is mechanical work, energy to move vehicles, pump fluids, drive industrial electric motors; the remainder, less than 5 %, represents all lighting, electronics, telecommunications, smelting , electroplating, arc-welding, electric railways, electric drive for home appliances, and all other uses of electricity other than low-grade heating and cooling.
Electricity is a very expensive form of energy. The premium applications in which we can get our money’s worth out of this kind of energy total less than 10% of all our end uses. With improved efficiency this could shrink by half which we could cover with present hydroelectric capacity plus modest amounts of industrial cogeneration. In other words, it could be argued we could be running this country with no new central power stations at all–if we used electricity only for tasks that can use its high quality to advantage, justifying its high cost in money and fuels. Those limited premium tasks are already far over-supplied, so if we make more electricity we can only use it for inappropriate low-grade purposses. As Amory Lovins puts it, “that is rather like cutting butter with a chainsaw–which is inelegant, expensive, messy, and dangerous.”
Having such a thermodynamic philosophy would save us energy, money, and trouble by supporting energy only in the quality needed for task at hand: supplying low-temperatures heat directly, not as electricity or as a flame temperature of thousands of degrees. Thus our task is not to find thousand megawatt blocks of electricity through new power plants but rather to perform directly the tasks we need to have performed by the most appropriate means available.
By thus matching energy quality to end use we can virtually eliminate conversion losses, just as matching scale virtually eliminates distribution losses. These two kinds of losses together make up more than half of the total energy budget.
To summarize thus far, how much primary energy we use–the fuel we take out of the ground does not tell us how much energy is delivered at the point of end use, for that depends on how efficient our energy systems are. End-use energy, in turn, says nothing about how much function we perform with the energy, for that depends on our end-use efficiency. And, I might add, how much function we perform says nothing about social welfare, which depends on whether the thing we did was worth doing.
ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY
Perhaps the most imprecise, misleading and self-serving use of the term “efficiency” today is that used daily by economists and policy-makers. It is a favorite mantra of free-market-fundamentalism. It is what they call “economic efficiency.”
It is imprecise because the value placed on inputs and outputs is arbitrary and infinitely changeable, misleading because inputs and outputs are selectively used and ignored and self-serving because, with the ability to cook-the-books to the bookkeeper’s advantage, it is used merely to justify the interests of a given enterprise.
The expressed intent of economic efficiency is to measure the economic output per economic input. As we have seen with energy efficiency, efficiency measures can be increased by decreasing input or by increasing output. The history of the use of the concept of economic efficiency is very enlightening and because it has become such a prominent piece in the fundamentalist liturgy, it is important to tell.
Profitability is a measure of economic efficiency. Like net energy analysis, what is left over from all the input to the system is the net yield–the profit of the system. There are major differences, however. For one, in net energy analysis, the units of measure are real– inescapable manifestations of the physical world–the laws of physics. An act of Congress, the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, the World Bank, Stanford’s Business School, Julian Simon, or even the ‘Supremacist’ Court can not repeal the Laws of Thermodynamics.
On the other hand, the measures of these economic analyses are arbitrary–figments of social convention, value negotiated by the most powerful in society. Not only are these measures not fixed in any basis of physical reality, they are incomplete–they systematically exclude known costs (inputs). To a large extent the apparent success or profitability of decades of economic efficiency analyses, rests in the cleverness of avoiding the inclusion of many essential real costs.
These avoided costs, historically, have been called “external costs” or “externalities”– as if giving them a label justifies them being left off the books. I will deal with this and other forms of the economist’s “word magic” in detail in another column ( see, “Spin, Word Magic and the Civility Ploy.”). Suffice it here to say that the calculation of economic efficiency for decades has included the systematic exclusion of known costs which is purposely deceptive, if not criminal, rendering it virtually useless.
This incomplete accounting in “economic efficiency” is a prime example of what Albert North Whitehead called, “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” The famous mathematician, Norbert Weiner was even more bitting in his critique, “economists have developed the habit of dressing up their rather imprecise ideas in the language of the infinitesimal calculus… Any pretense of applying precise formulae is a sham and a waste of time.”
I can’t resist an example or two for the instructional value to an evaluation of the ‘private-enterprise oil supplier’ energy plan we are now obliged to critique.
PUBLIC vs. PRIVATE EFFICIENCY
Is there anybody out there, besides me, who doesn’t buy the anti-government line that private enterprise is so much more “efficient” than a government entity charged with supplying the same thing ? Very few, I would guess. Why ? What is the evidence for this assertion of economic efficiency ? Efficiency of providing what desired effect or product ? How is the effort, expense or waste measured ?
I began looking into this myth for myself during the Carter/Reagan Presidential debates in the late 70’s. Ronald Reagan, the Great Myth-maker was rolling out another of his feel good fantasies that government was in the way of the common man realizing the American dream and wasting all its money on minority welfare mothers. And the best (most economically efficient) way to accomplish anything was to put it in private hands.
I was working in renewable energy resources and it was beginning to become apparent how rigged the energy market had become. By 1978, for instance, it was clear that the nuclear power industry wouldn’t exist and couldn’t continue without massive public subsidies. We in the energy field began to wonder how much energy-producing capacity and independence we would have if solar energy and other renewable had received any thing near the public subsidy that nuclear power had received.
The “faith-based” corporate welfare program for Nuclear Power (now totaling over one Trillion dollars over the past 50 years), is of course still continuing with bailouts now creatively called “stranded” costs. This is great grist for a future Curmudgeon column, “Nucs: Born-Again Stillborn,” so I’ll stop here.
The point is that if we were to use the same accounting books, there would be no doubt about which sector put out the most goods and services per total input of resources. And it would not be “privatization,” as it is called.
Government is accountable for every paper clip, pencil and yes, every $500 hammer–but accountable never the less. (Don’t forget that some private enterprise, in some pork-barrel Senator’s district, collected the $ 500 per hammer). Government agencies don’t have corporate accounting procedures with their massive “cost of doing business” deductions, tax credits, loop-holes, vertical integration with safe parent company bank accounts, tax shielding trusts, subsidies, gifts, corporate welfare/bailouts, …etc. Not to mention massive marketing and PR budgets (also deductible) to misinform the public and create acceptance as well as demand.
Government has become what Ronald Reagan feared–useless and even dangerous (but not because of what he feared). Due in large part to his administration and decades of following myth-makers, government has come to provide very little for the society as a whole virtually nothing for the needy. That is the grand design of free-market fundamentalism–replace government with the market.
And government’s relationship with the market has shifted from referee of a level playing field to house bank of a rigged card game. After sanctioning/ legalizing the marked deck and the hidden aces up the sleeve, the only thing left for them to do is cover the losses of the dealer. Of course, there has to be an outside winner every once and a while and much less frequently a Horatio Alger figure to perpetuate the illusion that any player can be the big winner and it is still worth playing.
But this illusion can not conceal the fact that the social accounts of our government are morally and financially bankrupt, while its corporate accounts are over flowing with “bag” money. It began with Reagan purposely depleting the Federal Treasury, creating the largest governmental deficit in the history of the world and continues with the latest $1.3 trillion tax rebate. When you get your rebate check in the mail be sure to save it to help pay for the lunch program for some neighborhood kid or the health care for someone in your community or for purchasing some clean air, water or even untainted food no longer assured by a depleted governmental commitment.
The efficiency these supply-siders speak of is the efficiency of generating income and concentrating wealth, not the efficiency of producing goods and services. It is sufficient just to create money by producing something, or nothing at all. More often than not what is produced are bads and disservices (toxins, addicting substances, dependence on vulnerable supply sources, market manipulation).
BACK TO THE FUTURE ENERGY PLAN
The first thing that is obvious in the administration’s approach to energy policy is what forms of efficiency matter to them and what forms do not. Their plan is a plan to maximize the economic efficiency of energy suppliers that they represent. They have no interest in maximizing the efficiency of the work done by the energy we use.
This is why Mr. Cheney rejects the “more with less” elemental engine of innovation. For him and his, it is a matter of less for them, less money for less energy sold. Never mind, that most everybody else in society would do better, the oil industry might do worse. That seems to be enough to justify Mr. Cheney’s most arrogantly ignorant and condescending dismissal.
So despite the clear benefits of energy efficiency, the Bush administration is intent on abandoning any real movement towards it. During his first hundred days, they have delayed a standard requiring all new central air conditioners to be 30 % more efficient. The budget proposal also cuts funding for renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, by more than 50 percent. The Bush administration’s plan is a U-turn that will reverse environmental gains and reaffirm a reliance on nonrenewable fuels.
We are once again standing at a crossroads when it comes to America’s energy policy. We had a chance during the Carter years and much was done in response. Many learned during the 1973 energy crisis that energy efficiency does not mean curtailment of functions (freezing in the dark). Amory Lovins has been showing us, for almost thirty years, how much work can we wring from each unit of energy that is delivered to us. Looking at the successes in Europe in the seventies, Lovins showed how increasing the efficiency of our energy systems on every level that we have discussed would result in a rational energy system that could virtually eliminate conversion and distribution losses that rob us of delivered end-use energy. He showed that Americans could double end-use efficiency by using “technical fixes” of present-day technologies with no significant effect on lifestyles through such measures as thermal insulation, more efficient car engines, heat recovery in industrial processes, and cogeneration of electricity as a byproduct of process heat.
In spite of government attempts during the “Great Leap Backward” of the Reagan years, recent history shows that Americans continued to make great strides. Since the 1973 “oil shock,” the US economy has grown nearly five times faster than energy use, according to the federal Department of Energy. While gross domestic product (GDP) more than doubled over the past 20 years, energy use rose just 26 percent. Most of this improvement has come through the use of more energy-efficient appliances, buildings, manufacturing processes, and transportation.
The big question now is, can the US sustain the recent trend in energy efficiency – producing more “negawatts,” as Amory Lovins puts it? This is the question that drives the political debate in Washington, particularly now that Democrats – whose rhetoric, at least, tends more toward renewable energy and conservation – have control of the Senate.
Mr. Bush’s energy plan calls for at least 1,300 additional power plants – averaging a new one every six days – over the next 20 years. Whether those plants are built depends mostly on state and local politics, as well as public attitudes.
American families appear to be conflicted. By a large margin (60 percent to 26 percent, according to a recent CBS poll), they prefer conservation over the increased energy production – coal, oil, and nuclear power plants – favored by
the Bush administration.
But Americans also continue to demand bigger homes and more
electronic gadgets, not to mention those ubiquitous gas-guzzling
SUVs. And for all its efficiency, the US still uses 1-1/2 times as much energy per dollar of economic output as Western Europe and twice as much as Japan.
WHAT WILL BE THE PUBLIC RESPONSE ?
A recent study sponsored by the Department of Energy found that if the government actively encouraged energy efficiency, demand for electricity could be reduced by as much as 47%. That would eliminate the need for hundreds of power plants. The Alliance to Save Energy states that “a combination of standards, building codes, and voluntary programs in the buildings sector can avoid the need for about 580 power plants.”
For example, according to the Alliance, if each American household were to replace four 100-watt light bulbs with compact fluorescents, the equivalent of 30 new 300-megawatt power plants could be saved. Going ahead with the new 30 percent increase in air-conditioner efficiency standards (recently rejected by the Bush administration) would prevent the need for another 138 power plants. Investing in already-proven designs to make buildings more efficient could cancel the construction of another 100 plants. (www. ase.org)
The biggest hurdle to a new breakthrough on saving energy remains personal transportation. After marked improvement since 1975, when federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards were implemented, the popularity of light trucks, vans, and SUVs (which aren’t required to meet those standards) has reversed that trend. As recently as June 19, 2001, General Motors says it will oppose any efforts to increase fuel-economy standards for cars, SUVs, and light trucks in the U.S. This was after Mr. Cheney assured company executives that the Bush administration had no plans to pursue higher fuel-economy standards. In the meantime, auto makers such as Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen are working on fuel-efficiency of their vehicles. Toyota has promised to produce 300,000 gas-electric hybrid vehicles per year starting in 2005; it produced 19,000 hybrids last year. Most of these hybrids are presently getting 50-60 miles per gallon. But this is nothing to the “hypercar” being developed at the Rocky Mountain Institute under Amory Lovins. The hypercar is 95% less polluting than a conventional car and gets between 100 and 200 miles per gallon. (www.rmi.org)
EFFICIENT FOR WHOM, WHO BENEFITS ?
From this multi-perspective analysis, we can see that if efficiency– “maximizing a desired effect or product with a minimum of effort, expense or waste”– really mattered, our path would be very clear. There would be no doubt that increasing energy efficiency is the easiest, most immediate, cost-effective and environmentally and socially responsible means of meeting our energy needs.
Different definitions of efficiency represent very different vested interests that greatly impact the development of energy policy.
The administration’s energy plan from “former” oil men Dick Cheney and G.W. Bush is all for the “economic efficiency” of increasing supply and increasing profits for the suppliers. To them energy efficiency measures get in the way of that goal. It doesn’t immediately benefit them and their cronies, it merely benefits the user. Their concern is not meeting energy needs for society but to meet the economic needs of corporate interests. And you need to disabuse yourself of the idea that they are the same .
It is time to realize that what is good for General Motors, General Electric, Exxon or Enron IS NOT NECESSARILY GOOD FOR AMERICA.
On the other hand, ask yourself, “Who benefits from a ‘doing more with less’ energy efficiency energy policy ?” We all benefit, all users and non-users, for that matter. Massive gains even for the supplier themselves could be gained by increasing conversion and distribution efficiency. Advocates of energy efficiency represent the consumer, the supplier and the society as a whole.
As it is now conservation and efficiency measures are primarily end-user decisions– savings go to the consumer. But with the proper leadership, savings could accrue throughout the entire system and the suppliers themselves could reap major benefits of a more efficient supply chain. Unfortunately, there is no leadership among the free-market fundamentalists to be found. This just goes to show how short-sighted, foolish and self-defeating the supply-side free-market dogma has become.
WHAT DEMAND ?
What seems to be lost on most of us is that the only real goal of this supply-side sect of free-market fundamentalism is to facilitate supply even it there is no demand. The lack of demand is not necessary and no real problem. Government support working with massive corporate PR budgets of the suppliers can create demand afterwards.
For example, there was no demand for nuclear energy or all electric homes before the government’s “Atoms for Peace” program and the “too cheap to meter” fiction created by the deceptive accounting of the economic efficiency specialists with their “external costs” (read; hidden subsidies). This kind of blatant deceit is worthy of the best of drug dealers where a free or cheap fix here or there, is an assured means of locking in a continued demand.
Just in passing, I would like to say that there was also NO demand for synthetic bovine growth hormone (BGH) and the resultant contaminated milk in the already over-supplied dairy industry and there is NO demand for genetically modified crops and food. In fact, there is decided lack of support for suppliers of such unwanted, unneeded and very possibly, dangerous, commodities. It is even worse than that, as those who do not want them would like to have the choice of not having them. But they are being denied the opportunity of choosing because labeling is not being allowed. Collusion between multinational suppliers and governments insist on “supplying ” them to those who DO NOT WANT THEM and the consumer has no way of distinguishing between what they want and what they don’t want. So much for the free-market/supply and demand mythology.
A future Curmudgeon piece is on its way about this, I bring it up now because it represents the same supply-side, jam-it-down-their-throat approach.
The very tenuous relationship between demand, price and supply has become extremely visible in the current “energy crisis” in California. California has the lowest per capita consumption of energy in the US. Last year, the demand for energy went up 2% there while what the state paid for the energy went from $ 7 billion to $27 billion. Enron’s (one of the energy wholesalers the one that virtually wrote the administrations energy plan ) profits for the first quarter of 2001 increased by 280%. On the other hand, in the past two months Californians have reduced their energy use by a further 11%. As one legislator put it, “you would have to be a blind pig not to see market manipulation here.” The current price gouging in California is nothing more than a vengeful rebuke from those who control the supply of energy (they don’t like decision to be taken beyond their control). It is an attempt to impose “structural adjustments,” to their advantage, on the most innovative energy users in the nation (most of which, I might add, didn’t vote for George W. Bush). More on this later, see the Curmudgeon’s “California as Third World.”
WHO WILL REPRESENT THE COMMON GOOD
Supply-siders have distorted the role of government from the provider of public good to the facilitator of corporate interest. Many, no doubt, go along with this because they think that these are the same thing. But they clearly are not.
Our government’s goal seems to be to build a society that meets the needs of a supply – side economy that they control, not the other way around where determined human needs are met by a subservient economic system.
Their response to efficiency shows how far removed economic logic has moved from physical reality. While economists, policy makers, corporate leaders would like to mold the world to adhere to their definition of economic efficiency. It can’t be done !! Their wrong-headed self-interest can not create what is impossible–infinite supply, or an infinite sink to absorb effluent even with the help of their word magic of “infinite substitutability.”
The government’s role in energy policy should be more than facilitating supply. It should be to envision the common good where everybody’s needs are met and encourage the most efficient means of meeting those needs.
Then a truly free market would be bristling with innovative suppliers providing super-efficient processes and appliances and a diverse set of energy sources specifically matched to end-use needs.
In order for this to happen, we need a government intent on providing for the Common Good that facilitates the exploration of efficient, equitable means, the education of the people about those means and the provision of those means by insuring a level playing field so that the genius of the free market can work as it should serving the agreed upon ends of society.
The supply side approach rests on the belief that more energy we use, the better off we are. Energy is elevated from a means to an end in itself. On a path of energy efficiency, on the contrary, how much energy we use to accomplish our social goals is considered a measure less of success than of our failure–just as the amount of traffic we must endure to gain access to places we want to get to is a measure not of well-being but rather of our failure to establish a rational settlement pattern. The cornerstone of a sustainable energy policy is to seek to attain our goals with elegant frugality of energy and trouble, using our best technologies (ingenuity) to wring as much social function as possible from each unit of energy use. This should be the goal of any government policy that purports to represent us all.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
I hereby disclose that I profit daily from the blessings of a living Earth. I take stock in the life-supporting systems of Nature that sustain us. I am heavily vested in the preservation of this Natural Capital. I have a strong self-interest in the common good and believe that rights come with responsibilities. I support those who speak truth to power. I am loyal to those who authentically lead the way to equity, justice, personal integrity, human dignity and compassion. I realize that this represents a significant conflict of interest with the free-market fundamentalism and technological determinism that dominates thought and action today.
These vested interests of mine do not permit my silent compliant acceptance of unfounded beliefs in the market and man and the mindless destruction in pursuit of profit and privilege.