Profitable Solutions to Climate, Oil, and Proliferation

Protecting the climate is not costly but profitable (even if avoided climate change is worth zero), mainly because saving fuel costs less than buying fuel. The two biggest opportunities, both sufficiently fast, are oil and electricity. The US, for example, can eliminate its oil use by the 2040s at a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ambio 2010-05, Vol.39 (3), p.236-248
Main Author: Lovins, Amory B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atmospheric Sciences
Automobiles
Automobiles - economics
Automobiles - standards
Capital costs
Carbon
Climate
Climate change
Coal - economics
Conservation of Energy Resources - economics
Conservation of Energy Resources - methods
Conservation of Energy Resources - trends
Corporate profits
Cost control
Cost efficiency
Design
Earth and Environmental Science
Ecology
Efficiency
Electric Power Supplies - economics
Electricity
Electricity generation
Emissions
Energy
Energy conservation
Energy economics
Energy efficiency
Environment
Environmental Engineering/Biotechnology
Environmental Management
Fuels
Gasoline prices
GDP
Gross Domestic Product
Housing - economics
Housing - standards
Hybrid cars
Integrative design
Natural gas
Oil
Petroleum - economics
Physical Geography
Poverty
Power plants
Proliferation
Public Policy
Renewables
Savings
Space telescopes
Studies
Thermal power
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Protecting the climate is not costly but profitable (even if avoided climate change is worth zero), mainly because saving fuel costs less than buying fuel. The two biggest opportunities, both sufficiently fast, are oil and electricity. The US, for example, can eliminate its oil use by the 2040s at an average cost of $15 per barrel (2000$), half by redoubled efficiency and half by alternative supplies, and can save three-fourths of its electricity more cheaply than operating a thermal power station. Integrative design permits this by making big energy savings cheaper than small ones, turning traditionally assumed diminishing returns into empirically observed expanding returns. Such efficiency choices accelerate climate-safe, inexhaustible, and resilient energy supply—notably the “micropower” now delivering about a sixth of the world's electricity and 90% of its new electricity. These cheap, fast, market-financeable, globally applicable options offer the most effective, yet most underestimated and overlooked, solutions for climate, proliferation, and poverty.
ISSN:0044-7447
1654-7209
DOI:10.1007/s13280-010-0031-6