(00:00:00) Our Guest for the next hour is dr. Amory Lovins the founder and research director of the Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, Colorado, he is in town to speak at the Humphrey Institute Institute tonight on the Energy Efficiency Revolution a strategy for economic development and Environmental Protection first, I'll give the phone numbers for people in the listening region who might have questions about energy issues and related environmental concerns in the Twin Cities. The number to call is two two seven six thousand 2276 thousand elsewhere in Minnesota one 865 297 hundred calling from outside, Minnesota called the Twin Cities area. Number two two seven six thousand at area code six one two, Well, welcome to be here. Tell us a little bit about what the Rocky Mountain Institute is and why you put it together. Well, actually my wife and colleague Hunter and I she's our resident set it up in 82 to Foster the efficient and sustainable use of resources as a path to Global Security we have now about 44 people working in five programs namely Energy Water agriculture redefining National Security and what we call economic renewal, which is an Innovative approach to Local Economic Development. We're especially interested in how those five areas are related. And how do you go about achieving the goal of of safer America through through better energy or whatever. We do quite a lot of work on Advanced Technologies for resource efficiency and new ways to finance and deliver them to the people who need them. So for example EPA Straighter Bill Riley just started a veto process for a billion-dollar damn outside Denver. We'd shown about three weeks earlier that providing water saving equipment to Denver households could save more water than the dam would yield a tad less than a fifth of cost? Similarly. We're working on how to Abate problems like global warming and acid rain largely through Market forces because efficiencies cheaper than fuel. So when you burn less fuel you can actually make money on the deal rather than paying extra in redefining security. We're looking at combination of conflict prevention conflict resolution and on provocative defense and quite a lot a large part of conflict prevention is avoiding conflicts over resources. For example, if we took one year's budget of what we pay for Naval forces in the Persian Gulf and put it into making American buildings or heat tight. Would eliminate Imports of Mideast oil right there. That's a that's a wide baileywick to try and deal with how did you come about trying to do all these things? And what's the what's the tie that binds all of them? There are many connections between them. Especially what we call the end-use least cost approach in which for any resource you start by asking what do you want the stuff for and how much of it of what kind at what scale from what source is going to do the job in the cheapest way there's actually a parable that guides our work at Rocky Mountain Institute and it's a true story from the early 50s in Borneo where the diag people were suffering from. Malaria the World Health Organization had a Nifty solution namely spray DDT all over so they did that killed mosquitoes. So the malaria decline so far so good, but then they were very side effects. For example, the roofs of people's houses started to fall down on their heads because it seems the DDT. It also killed parasitic wasps, which had previously controlled. With a cheating caterpillars, then they found that the DDT poison bugs were eaten by Little lizardy Critters called geckos which are eaten by cats. So the DDT built up in the food chain and killed the cats without the rat the cats the the rats flourished multiplied and pretty soon the World Health Organization was threatened with outbreaks of typhus and plague which it had itself created and was thereby obliged to parachute live cats into Borneo operation cat drop courtesy of the royal Air Force. So we're trying to understand the connections between energy water Agriculture security and development before folks have to go parachuting more cats. You see what the example shows is that if you don't understand connections then quite often the cause of problems is Solutions, but we think if you do understand connections, you can make the cause of solutions be Solutions. You can solve one problem like energy waste in a way that solves many other problems at the same time. Well, let's launch into energy ways the of course this country went through a spasm of thinking about Energy and how to use it more efficiently back in the 70s doesn't seem like a whole lot has been done along those lines or at least public attention has been focused on that very sharply in recent years. How how efficient are we as a nation? Have we become more efficient in our use of energy very much. So, in fact over the past decade we've gotten over seven times as much new energy from savings as from all the net increases in Supply put together and of those increases in Supply by the way more has come from renewable sources Sun wind water and wood than from oil gas coal and uranium. So that Renewables are now about 11 or 12 percent of our total energy Supply and the fastest-growing part. The only thing growing faster is savings. We've already cut the energy intensity of the economy by a quarter its oil and gas intensity by a third and Opex market share in half, but we did that basically with Calkins duct tape somewhat more efficient cars. Is plugging a few steam leaks nothing fancy not trying very hard and meanwhile, there's been a technological revolution in new ways to bring more work out of our energy, especially our electricity the costliest kind of energy so we can now save twice as much electricity as we could five years ago. And it only a third the cost five years ago. I could only have told you that it's usually cheaper to save electricity than to build new power stations. But today it's generally cheaper to save electricity than to operate existing fossil fuel door nuclear power stations, even if building them cost nothing. But that's great. It means we can actually save money by abating problems like global warming and acid rain Amory Lovins is our guest today on midday founder and research director of the Rocky Mountain Institute will be ready to take your calls on issues of energy the environment National Security and it sounds like just about anything else. The number in the Twin Cities is 2276 thousand outstate Minnesota one 865 to 9700 few callers are standing by let's go to the first one. Hello. What's your question, please? (00:06:51) All right. Well, obviously you're going to get into the topics of superconductivity and room temperature Fusion. So I won't even mention that but your comment on the Navy budget being devoted to tightening up building code standards and Energy savings. That's kind of amazing, but I think your problem is you guys are too logical. It's not a logical world out there my question nuclear energy not Fusion, but fission, I A while back that there's a new process for taking I don't know what this tooth are u-238 or what kind of enriched uranium they use to make a reactor cook but there's a process of taking this fissionable material and particle izing it and then putting it into an element like, you know, use Boron for control rods and reactors and some Neutron absorbing surface. There's a process where you can implant it into the neutron of serving observe absorbing material to such a degree that it's impossible to get a critical mass I a meltdown China Syndrome, but you maintain a continuous reaction if you're familiar with what I'm saying? In other words, that would make you safe reactor in (00:08:06) theory. Okay? And what's the question (00:08:08) please that's the question. We had a technology and how does it work? Are you familiar with (00:08:11) it? I'm not familiar with it. But if you're going to have enough nuclear reactivity to make the reactor put out energy you have to have a And concentration of fissionable material and there are of course a number of schemes for trying to make reactors what's called inherently safe, which means that the burden of being infallible is moved one step back from The Operators to the designers in whom I have a good deal of confidence, but not an infinite amount. You know, the question I get to First on nuclear energy is the economic one. Of course. I have concerns about proliferation and wasted and safety. But if the technology is necessary and isn't cost-effective, why are we doing it at all? We then we shouldn't be arguing about whether it's safe. We just shouldn't be buying it. And since we have today Technologies to save over four times as much electricity is all our nuclear plants make at a quarter to a tenth of the cost of just Nuclear plant without even talking about the cost of building it and I think it's a Dead Issue your Reflections on the whole Fusion flap of the last month or so. I've been following that with some interest and it shows there can be surprises. There's an excellent chance. It doesn't work. A lot of the measurements have been done by chemists who don't understand about nuclear instrumentation and when they think they're detecting neutrons, they're actually using a neutron detector as a temperature or humidity meter. Maybe it works. Maybe somebody's come up with some basically new physics. But if they have it probably doesn't matter a whole lot for making electricity because even if the heat Source were free the energy would still be much much much more expensive than efficient use now. It might become interesting. If you could do it on a small scale say for running a car, but first, let's see if it works and if it's practical Most physicists now are offering very log odds that it doesn't work. I was just briefed on it in Budapest by one of the leading scientists in Hungary. Who is I think the first outside Utah to do the experiment and I came away like the other physicists in the room fairly skeptical about whether he's seen anything in the way of a nuclear reaction. I think one fellow wrote In The New York Times that most most resembled a design from the early 1800s for a chemical cigarette lighter so it could be just a very interesting battery. I don't want to rule out the possibility that the something is there and there are in fact a couple of big Joker's in the energy Supply deck. Somebody could come up with really cheap solar cells or with a really cheap way to make water into hydrogen by using sunlight in a catalyst because we know how to do that in a test tube. We just haven't scaled it up yet. And if either of those comes up or cold fusion or some other surprise, then we can start worrying about other problems like water and soil and secure. Let's go back to the phones now for the next caller. Hello your question, please (00:11:23) thank you. I'm calling from Minneapolis on the political side. I'm aware of and I support Amory Lovins approach through the through the market and through new technology, but I just am deeply disappointed in the politics lately. For example, the general question is how much of an environmentalist is George Bush as Amory Lovins sees it and more specifically on energy both the Reagan and the Bush Administration seemed not only not to support conservation and not to perceive what Amy Levin is telling us about about the advantages of conservation, but actually to to hinder attempt by at least I don't know but by the government is supported and so the question is are there that we have allies in the And the administration who I think William Riley is excellent, but secretary lu han is not so good. Are there others who see this he is he aware of others either in the administration and are there other particular senators and Congress persons who we can count on to support energy conservation's (00:12:33) League of conservation voters compiles the voting records of members of Congress on environmental issues. And I think is an excellent way to find out how people are voting and if you don't like it, you can tell them and if you do like it, you should tell them to you know, if Bill Riley does something good as I think the two forks damn decision was by all means write to President Bush said, mr. Riley a copy and say why you think it's a good thing because if people do good things and don't get reinforced politically, it's much harder for them to stick their necks out next time. I think there are a lot of good Folks at lower levels in a number of agencies, including the department of energy and even interior. I've been very disappointed with the proposed choices for senior posts to look after the public lands. And in that sense, we're sort of back to mr. Watt. And that's something where I think all of us need to live up to our political responsibilities a bit better. It is not clear yet. I think it's really too early to say whether this is a more environmentally aware Administration. Although it would be pretty tough to be worse than the last one. Is there any evidence that George Bush is in fact an environmentalist? Well, I don't know him. So it's hard to say he has made some good noises and we will we will wait to see whether he lives up to them. The nice thing about his rhetoric during the campaign is that you can keep reminding him of it. At least he isn't talking about trees causing air pollution. I think a more serious test will be whether he really favors. Doing the cheapest things first, the corporate socialists who have been dominating Washington the past eight years are still hanging around trying to get their snouts in the trough and if we really had an energy policy and several other kinds of public policy that took economic seriously did the cheapest things first. Most of our environmental problems would go away. Okay, let's go back to the phones and another caller. Hello. You're on the (00:14:40) air. I'm a restaurant owner and I've been trying to save electricity after hearing you on the Amery on the radio a couple of months ago had some problems finding information about the things that you were talking about. And I was just wondering how I could reach the Rocky Mountain Institute or if there's something in the Twin Cities I could look for and then secondly, what's the cost of your (00:15:03) services? Okay, Rocky Mountain Institute is at 1 7 3 9 Snowmass Creek Road Snowmass. All one word like a massive snow which some of it is right now and that's in Snowmass. Colorado co 81654 - 9199. We have some publications of interest to folks like you we have a 15 Buck annotated bibliography called a resource efficient housing guide. That's a where to find out where to find out guy that's quite detailed. We have a five buck visitor's guide to our building which includes the a where to get it list of the technologies that we use to eliminate the heating load and save naughty odd percent of our electricity and half the water we have a excuse me. We have a number of catalogs and other information on new water saving Technologies. We have an extremely detailed technical service. That's mainly designed for major industries utilities design firms. Governments is called competitor could cost $9,000 a year and it provides probably the most detailed and up-to-date information available on how to save electricity. If you have trouble getting things like efficient light bulbs, you could call 303 9278051 and they can probably help you out. The Rocky Mountain Institute. Phone number is 303 9273128 or message machine on 3851 and I'll try to give those numbers out in the address again at the end of the program. Another caller is standing by. Hello your question for Amory Lovins. (00:16:55) Hi. Thank you and good afternoon to both of you. My question today concerns the electricity Supply you talked a little bit earlier about the conservation that we've been doing lately. We've had such a moratorium on new construction of both nuclear plants and also a conventional power plants have all been in trouble as far as Construction. Lot of the present Supply is coming from plants that have technology that even runs back to the early 1900's question is how long considering the present rate of growth in the supply side and also the conservation side can we count on having a stable supply of power without the plant having to sacrifice environmental by shutting down the scrubbers to save their electricity for consumers and things like that. How long do we have to go with the the plants that we have there (00:17:41) now that depends on whether we take efficiency, seriously the efficiency efforts so far used basically five or ten year old technology. So they don't say very much and they they cost a lot more than they would if you did them with modern technology, if we if we if we just use the old Technologies really thoroughly and if on that basis, for example, all Americans saved electricity at the same speed and cost. At which 10 million people in Southern California actually did save electricity in the mid 80s, then our long-term power supply needs as a nation would go down by 40 huge plants worth per year and the cost of doing that to the cost of the utility would be about one percent the cost of a new power plant. So even the old Technologies and delivery methods are so powerful that if we did them just as well as one utility did and we had say 3 or 4% a year economic growth. We could still cut our total electric use by about 5% a year over a tenure planning Horizon. Well, that's pretty encouraging but with the new technologies we can save about three-quarters of the electricity in the country while actually improving the quality and amount of services delivered and the average cost of doing that is about 6/10 of a cent per kilowatt hour again, that's much cheaper than just running a fossil fuel door nuclear plant. So with with those new technologies and very New ways to deliver them that utilities are now starting to bring it a successful use. I don't see why we should ever have to build more capacity that said if we did build more capacity, it certainly wouldn't be the big steam raising plants. Those are already obsolete. We would build packaged combined cycle gas plants or Steve injected gas turbines or possibly some Renewables the age of the big Steam Plant is over for very basic economic reasons. Let me suggest by the way, since several callers have used the c word that we get out of the habit of talking and thinking about energy conservation because thanks to our two previous presidents to a third of Americans conservation means discomfort privation and curtailment it means being hotter in the summer and colder in the winter. I suggest that if what we're talking about is efficiency doing more with less by smarter technology that we use the efficiency word instead because it's unambiguous the e word means you save money. Yeah, but you don't give up Anything you get the same Services as before or better? Okay, let's go to another caller. Hello. You're on the air. What's your question, please? (00:20:22) Well, actually I have two questions and you may have addressed one and that is I want to get those phone numbers again. I think you're going to repeat the later on. Yeah, the end of the program. The next question is kind of a something of an economic logic question. I think everyone or most people agree that that moves towards greater efficiency are desirable and probably will have great effects in the short run. However in the long run since I think most people also would agree that increased economic well-being is a desirable goal. And secondly, I think most people agree that that is related to greater energy utilization. However to find Simply implementing greater efficiencies are greater conservation measures. Well, if you plotted this relationship simply drop the curve a little bit but it will still continue to go up perhaps at a lower at a smaller slope. But all that implementing every one of your objectives will do is shift the curve by some period of time it may be five years and maybe 50 years, but at some point in the future we are going to reach the same level of energy consumption as we are now as long as we want to have greater economic well-being. So I guess my question is I am concerned with the attitude that conscious of conservation or greater efficiency solves the problem as far as I could see all it does is delays the problem and we still need more energy (00:21:54) sources. Well, it's a question of degree if you can as I think is clear you can't now say Fully efficiency of using electricity and oil at very low cost and you can buy even more efficiency than that at slightly higher price. That's still very attractive. Are you really saying that we're going to catch up catch back up to our present level of energy needs because we are going to expand the economy by a factor of four or five. I think if we did that we would run into many other kinds of constraints long before we got to that point when you're talking about that degree of I wouldn't even call it economic growth by that point. It's economics swelling you really have to face serious questions of how much is enough and also questions of equity in the world. Now the good news about that. Is that the developing countries which have inequity quite a steak on in the world's resources are almost three times less energy efficient than the rich countries. So if if they could get As efficient as we ought to be in other words a factor of almost 3 to get to where we are now and then another factor of four or five efficiency gain to be as efficient as we should be then they could expand their economies by a factor of something like 10 or 15 without increasing their present level of energy use at all. Meanwhile, we could be saving energy faster than our economy grows. As I mentioned. This is already been achieved in one important case so we could have some modest economic growth, which I assume is going to saturate someplace and you don't assume that and we could still end up using a lot less energy than now to be better off than we are now. Amory Lovins is our guest today on midday. It's about twenty-five minutes past noon on a very practical level as Joe Minnesotan. What can I do? What are the five three or four or five things that maybe I haven't done up to now new technologies new ways of approaching efficiency in my household with my car that kind of thing that you have identified that I could do to help both myself and the country. Well whenever you buy something say an appliance or a car it ought to be very efficient. You can now get 60 odd miles a gallon cars you can get refrigerators twice and freezers three times the normal level of efficiency and and so on and and you therefore ought to seek out the information sources that lets you identify those Best Buys and the more you demand them the more the suppliers will make them available to you and your neighbors you To get hold of something called House Doctor Who diagnosis your houses chills and fevers and prescribes what to do about them person who does an energy audit my son. Well, no, it's more than that. In fact, we need to get away from the word audit to because that makes people think of the IRS. How about a checkup? We're used to taking our body to the doctor for a check-up. How about having a doctor make a house call and house doctor has specialized tools infrared viewing devices to see where heat is leaking out through inadequate insulation a blower door, which pressurizes your house actually can either blower suck but it it changes the air pressure between the inside and the outside so that you can see where the air is leaking through the cracks and then you can call several times the area of cracks that you could just see by eye and a house doctor will also make recommendations on better insulation better Windows and so on. You need to get a really up-to-date House doctor we have for example windows on the market now that insulate four times as well as triple glazing but cost about the same as triple glazing so things like triple glazing and storm windows. Although they're better than single glazing or double are already obsolete we can do much better than that with new technology. I would give some serious thought to how you get to work and how far you live from where you want to be and whether you can work at home for that matter two-thirds of the people that are Institute walk to work. They lived next door or they work at home by computer. And that way we can have 44 people sharing 20 desks. Everyone works Flex time. So it's really quite delightful. If it's a powder day you go skiing and you make it up another time. I would at your place of work try to get the boss interested in Saving energy by comparing it not with the total cost of doing business, but with net profit because when you save energy, it's reduced overhead and it goes straight to the bottom line. Tax-free quite often CEOs. Don't think that way they I was just working with a Fortune 50 company for which energy is two or three percent of the cost of doing business, so they weren't very Twisted in it. Well, they happen to have an outstanding energy manager at one facility of a million square feet and over five years. He's built up the Energy savings to three and a half bucks per square foot per year. That's kind of interesting but then I pointed out that if hypothetically they achieve the same result at their 92 million square feet of facilities worldwide that big corporations total net profits would go up by 56% I think that got their attention and whether whether you work in a store or on a farm or in an office or in a factory, you can be sure that the new technologies offer some very important energy and money saving opportunities that can make your business more competitive and help you and others keep their jobs. Now the home doctor quickly where how would I know who to ask for and how much should I think about paying for this kind of boy check-up? Well, unfortunately, I don't I don't know the Minnesota seen well enough to know where the house doctors are there. Probably a local safe Energy Group. There's the state Energy Office. You have some excellent City energy offices in the Twin Cities and I think between them they can probably help you find who the good house doctors are and who the reliable installers are and I would also make sure that you demand this kind of information from your utilities some of the utilities and Minnesota feel that there isn't much public interest in Saving energy. So they don't want to put much effort into it and the more you demand that they help you minimize your bill the more likely they are to get it done. Well number of people have been waiting patiently and you're the first person. Hello. You're on the air. What's your question, please? (00:28:41) Well my to concerns are you don't like to see where it but how do you conserve water? And the other one is imported we'd type plants and the expense of eradicating them on the water basis. I was amazed on one trip to NASA The Bahamas how fast the toilet bowl was cleaned with how small amount of water and now they are producing fixtures that don't use nearly as much so I've been living in my house for 20 years and the people who set the rates say, well, you're one person in a household and you don't use enough water. So we have to charge you a minimum. So you pay for what you're really not using and now most recently they put on another Amount for storm sewer and I live in Edina which is the inner ring of mature built-up suburbs on our street my house and those on each side we take what water comes out of the sky and we don't fertilize and we don't sprinkle our Lawns and that second concern about wheat plants. We've had purple loosestrife around here for a long time and it's pretty hard to get rid of the huge Lake to the west of us called Lake Minnetonka has imported Asiatic plant that's going to cost them an awful lot in. What's where can you prevent these kind of big problems? (00:30:23) Well, generally if Exotics are taking over like that. It's a sign of ecological imbalance and you need to ask what was growing there in the first place and try to restore it. That's a very specialized business and it actually relates to water use as well. In Denver roughly half the residential water use which is two-thirds of the total water use is to grow Blue Grass Lawns, which of course we're never meant to exist that far west. If you switch over to Native more drought-tolerant grasses, you can save over half your lawn watering and only your botanist knows for sure. Your first question is one that Rocky Mountain Institute is worked on a lot and we're happy to provide a list of our Publications on both the equipment and the implementation methods for saving most of the water now used just for example, a standard shower head uses something like 4 to 8 gallons a minute, but you can now get just as wet with one using one and a half to two gallons a minute and it can be pounding vigorous shower or neatly one or Misty one. Whatever you want. They're available in all shapes and sizes. We've been using for five. There's a toilet that uses point eight gallons. And another that uses 1.06 gallons instead of the standard 5-gallon flush. And these efficient ones are more reliable and work better. They also look a lot nicer same thing with faucet aerators that save roughly half the water in your kitchen and bathroom sinks. When you add all these up for example for a town of 7,000. We recently analyzed you find that if you were to give them away and install them without charge in every household over 20 years the cost of doing that would net out to about minus half a million dollars why - well because the energy Savings in the hot water are worth more than a cost to give away the equipment so that more than pays for them. And then the water savings are better than free. And the real icing on the cake is you can avoid some very big investments in expanding water treatment or wastewater treatment facilities, but that's on a social level. I presume it. What how do you decide whether or not it's worthwhile? And you know re outfit every bathroom in your house. Well, the the shower heads and aerators are obviously a great deal. And by the way, I'm not talking about the shower flow restrictors those little washers that give you a wimpy shower though. I wouldn't touch those with a bargepole nor would I put bricks in the toilet tank I'm talking about equipment that is engineered to run very well without much water and the shower heads and aerators you ought to do regardless and if your water is metered, you'll probably find it a very good deal to change toilets, but that'll pay back in a few years instead of a few months. Now if you have a water utility that has its head screwed on right way around and is facing a supply decision or if you're in a town that's hooking up sewers or expanding a sewage treatment plant. They ought to give you a break on your TAP fee. If you're putting less stuff into the sewer. And of course if you have a septic system, it's an even better deal. You can downsize your leech. You will not have to pump the tank so often and so on just have less problem because you're putting less load on the system. Now. There are a lot of communities that are offering various incentives for people to save water for these social reasons that then reflect back in your bill some of them offer a sliding scale hook up fee. So you pay a positive feed hook up if you use a lot of water and they pay you to hook up if you don't use much some communities giveaway equipment some give you a rebate for buying a better toilet in one town Morro Bay, California. They were so short of water that said if you want to build a house in this town you first need to save that much water somewhere else in town and the home builders themselves fixed up a third of the houses with efficient equipment in less than two years Our Guest today is Amory Lovins and there is another caller standing by with a question. Hello. You're on the (00:34:31) air. Hi. Let me shut my machine. There you go. I approve of the general. Her this conversation, but I think it's been a little bit too cozy and as a practicing engineer, I'd like to throw in a couple of clankers. Okay, don't make it too complicated though. My experience is that a lot of technical problems are like squeezing a balloon as you improve something in one place something gets worse somewhere else. And just to cite a couple of examples from the area that you're talking about people a few years back 15 20 years built very well insulated very tight houses and then they started smelling bad because they didn't get enough air circulation and you know, their Environmental Quality went down because the place was too tight and other area now, I've been hearing about these energy efficient light bulbs, but so far all I've heard about our fluorescent bulbs and the Spectrum from fluorescent bulbs is not very really very nice. I don't care to work in a fluorescent-lit environment fortunately. I don't have to a lot of people do and some suffer and some don't finally on the matter of renewable resources. I haven't heard anything that indicates that wind energy for example, is any cheaper than it was 15 or 20 years ago and that makes it an order of magnitude. More expensive than any other kind of installed power. With you you have any liens on newer cheaper? (00:36:14) We openers. Yeah, let me just take those three quickly. First of all, obviously, if you live in a thermos bottle and don't ventilate it you'll have problems just the chili and garlic will get you let alone the formaldehyde and no X. So what you ought to do about that is to have a tight house but controlled ventilation through a gadget called an air to air heat exchanger. We have six of them. That means that you bring in as much fresh air as you need and it passes by the outgoing stale air, but they don't actually mix they're separated by a series of thin metal or plastic sheets. So you end up recovering about three-quarters of the heat or cool from the outgoing into the incoming air, so you can have fresh healthy air and save most of the energy it's a very cost-effective deal and they are widely used in cold climates particularly in Scandinavia. The on the fluorescent compact fluorescent lamps. The ones were talking about are not at all like Normal office fluorescence they use what's called a try stimulus phosphor, which is tuned to your red green and blue retinal cones. And they give 82 to 88 percent perfect color rendering. It's a very agreeable color and also these lamps tend to run at high frequency. So there's no flicker. No hum. No strobing on the computer screen. It's really what a fluorescent always should have been and people like my wife who can't stand fluorescence just like you actually prefer working under these because it's even a truer color rendering in many respects than an incandescent lamp on when power there's been very dramatic progress in both cost and reliability wind farms. Mostly using Danish equipment have in the past two years been routinely installed on the California utility grids at a cost to the developer of about 600 bucks a kilowatt and you can work out as an engineer that's real cheap electricity. It's cheaper than Minnesota rates now it is Quite as windy here as it is in those passes and ridges in California. You only want to put wind in windy places obviously, but those machines compete very nicely on the California grid with no subsidy against subsidized power plants right now another caller standing by hello. What's your question, (00:38:27) please? I have two questions there about one old and one new technology. The old technology is ammonia-based refrigeration systems, and I'm wondering if anything is being done with that in the light of the chlorofluorocarbon disaster that's facing us. Now. The second question is about a new technology that utilizes a solid state device that when electricity is applied to it gets hot on one side and cold on the other. It's currently being used in containers that you can put food in to keep it cold or hot that you would plug into your car and wondering if that might at some Point be feasible for air conditioning the car or for air conditioning your house your comments, (00:39:15) please well, that one is if it's what I'm thinking of it's a very old technology actually called is a BEC Peltier Junction and it's very inefficient. So it's only used in specialized applications, especially in Aerospace and a better way to heat or cool. Your car would be to have for example Windows who's Optical properties change with little control voltage so that they'll keep you warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer and that's already in the works ammonia-based Refrigeration. Of course works fine. It does subject you to some OSHA regulations to protect you and your workers from ammonia leaks and it is still fairly widely used in the commercial sector. I think it's starting to be Revisited. Although most of the Rd on how to get around floor fluorocarbons to protect both the ozone layer and prevent global warming. That research is focused on other kinds of refrigerants that are a little more efficient than ammonia another caller with another question. Hello. You're on the air. (00:40:18) My question has to Centralization of power meaning do you think in the future they'll be more Farmers where the farmer will be producing his own energy from you know, the cow Way start having his own wind generator and and I'm wondering if that would help some of the problems if it's just not one big thing that (00:40:43) well that having energy at the right scale for the job is a great way to save money and improve in particular Farm economics. This is widely done in Denmark. Now, they have biogas plants on most of the dairy farms and there's some really neat Integrations. You can do for example, you can run a biogas plant to convert the manure to methane and to a fertilizer that's improved the nitrogen's more available. So you can save some chemical inputs and improve till that way you then take the methane and run a little engine on it the runs a generator to make your electricity plus enough for six more such Farms. And you get waste heat off the engine you first use that to say heat washing water for the milking parlor. And then you recover waste heat off the waste water from that operation and use it to preheat water for the cows to drink that that boost the milk yield because they don't have to use so much energy warming up cold water you feed them. And then the dry residue from the digester actually makes a very good bedding and you can get several years payback just from reduction in mastitis without counting any of the energy benefits, then you can start integrating that whole system with aquaculture and Greenhouse Agriculture and so on and it gets to be really Nifty. It does take more careful management and it's of course A different kind of farming than just corn and beans and spraying stuff. But I think it's kind of ecologically conscious agriculture that we're finding is at least as profitable as the old kind probably more so Much more consistently so and of course you can keep on doing it forever because you're not using anything up. If a question for Amory Lovins. The number to call in the Twin Cities is 2276 thousand elsewhere in Minnesota one 865 to 9700 another caller on the line. Hello. What's your question, please? (00:42:37) Yes. I have a question regarding a lectures electricity production col vs. Hydro and also involving Rea coops versus commercial power suppliers a large area of Northern and Eastern Minnesota receives its electric power from a lecture to Electric cooperatives Rea coops. And these coops are supplied their electricity from the power company over in West Central North Dakota that produces all its electricity from burning coal. The cost of their coal produced electricity is in some cases about twice as expensive as the relatively clean hydroelectric power, which is generated by commercial suppliers. The members of these coops want the cleaner electricity and they want cheaper power but they're told that they're locked into these Aria contracts. Do you have any recommendations for all these people in northern eastern Minnesota who are told they're locked into the coal produced expensive (00:43:40) electricity. Well, I don't know what their contracts say, and I don't know what the scope is if they do say that for renegotiating the contracts the national Rural Electric Co-op Association in Washington may be able to help or the environmental action Foundation which deals quite a lot in Washington with Public Power issues. It's hard to generalize about sites because some Hydro can be very environmentally damaging. But if that's not the case, I generally prefer Hydro to Cole and efficiency to either because it's even cheaper. I think no matter what the what the co-op's contracts say. They're probably not oblige. To buy and pay for a particular amount of electricity but only as much as they need so they would be smart to need less by helping their members get a lot more efficient another caller standing by what's your question, please? (00:44:34) Yes, good afternoon. I've taken mr. Lovins message. Seriously now for more than a decade and emerged in energy professional rate. The year that Ronald Reagan was elected to office a solar energy professionals a matter of (00:44:48) fact, sorry about the timing (00:44:49) timing was terrible. So actually things have worked out rather. Well for me, I've ended up designing energy efficient water purification systems. My question concerns some advice for those people who currently would like to head for a career in energy with these this message in mind something. That's perhaps a little bit more immune to the political winds. (00:45:17) Yeah, I'll go into the efficiency business because it'll beat everything in economic terms and particularly electric efficiency, which is the most lucrative kind you may end up working for utility because increasingly utilities are financing and delivering efficiency. In fact, sometimes they're giving the stuff away Southern California Edison gave away half a million quadrupled efficiency light bulbs because it was cheaper to do that than to run their power plants. But if you if your utility is not alert enough to those opportunities, you can always compete with it and probably do pretty. Well. There's no particular advantage to being big in the efficiency business and you've already heard on this program some people who want to know where to get efficiency the biggest cheapest Savings of electricity tend to be in the commercial and Industrial sectors. So probably the biggest gold mine in the whole economy is Commercial Lighting retrofits and that's a very good business to get into we're going to need Eat a lot of experts in industrial and other drive system retrofits. There's about 35 kinds of things you can do to Motors and their electric supplies controls mechanical Drive trains and maintenance practices. The together save about half the motor energy at about a half cent per kilowatt hour. But to do all those things to a drive system takes a kind of Integrative thinking that is not so common among Engineers today and we're going to have to reinvent a kind of torque team that I as a industrialist they could call up and say come into my factory and do all those 35 things to my drive systems. I don't want to have to hassle with it. Similarly. If I run a shop or an office I can save 80 or 90% of my lighting Bill it'll look better and I'll see better by retrofitting modern equipment, but I don't want to have to hassle with that. If I'm in the shirt business I care about sure it's not about lights, so I want to be able to call in. An expert who will do all of those things to my lighting system do them right Finance them guarantee the performance and Bill me on a shared savings basis. Let's go to our next caller. Hello. What's your question? Please (00:47:33) Energy Efficiency Technologies as policy on the local state and federal (00:47:37) level. The action has never been at a federal level. We just hope the feds keep out of the way the action set of state and local level and and things like the energy mobilization in Saint Paul are very interesting example of what a community can do to raise Consciousness get information out. I think we're ready now for the next round of those activities and we're starting to see it. For example a little municipalities in Iowa. You probably have heard the story of Osage, IA Iowa population 4000 where the municipal utility help people whether eyes not a very sophisticated program, but well managed and in about eight or nine years of this the utility cut its cost so much more than its revenues that it was able to pay off all its debt prematurely build up a big cash Surplus cut the rates by a third. They had five rate cut in five years and this attracted to Big factories to town most important. They kept recirculating in that local economy over. Thousand bucks per household per year money that used to go out of town and usually out of state to buy utility inputs was now sticking around going from hand to hand supporting local jobs and local multipliers and in a country where a tenth of the payroll of a typical Community still goes and mostly goes out of town to buy utility inputs. That's about the most powerful kind of economic development that we know. It's just plugging leaks of dollars out of the community. We have a little less than 10 minutes in our conversation with Amory Lovins and a couple of people on the line standing by so let's try and get through these questions. Hello. You're next. What would you like to know? (00:49:20) My question is about the potential of microprocessor-based control systems for saving energy. I particularly would like some elaboration on the control of electric motors by variable speed motor drives any other potential applications for these (00:49:39) Okay, a lot of motors are used to run things like fans and pumps and blowers where the amount of flow varies directly as the speed. But the amount of energy required to run it varies as the cube of the speed. So if a times you need say only half as much flow and you had a perfectly efficient controller you could save 7/8 of the energy at that time. Well, there are in fact ninety autofit percent efficient controllers of that kind of several kinds do they're called adjustable speed drives. They can collectively save about 14 to 27 percent of u.s. Motor energy, which is over half of all electric. Use. There are several other kinds of important electronic controls. There are things called power factor controllers, which are kind of like the the computer that controls fuel injection to a car. It feeds the motor just enough voltage to meet its load at the time, but not a surplus that would make Surplus magnetizing. And just make the motor hotter and there's little outfit in Des Moines called compressor controls that makes controllers for compressors as the name implies that save typically 15 to 25% make it much more reliable pay back in a year there even a few other kinds as well. We've just finished a 400-page book last week on how to save roughly half the motor energy in the country. So I'm all full of this stuff and what we're really seeing in the drive power business as in so many others is the information and micro Electronics Revolution coming together with materials and design revolutions to give us really smart systems. For example, there's an outfit in California developing a smart pump for irrigation and this pump would take account of spot Market electric rates weather forecasts evapo transpiration groundwater depletion the efficiency of the pump under different operating conditions. Readings from moisture meters in the soil it would integrate all this stuff and end up managing your irrigation. So as to minimize your cost maximize your crop yield just to get back for a sec to the earlier question of the thing. I meant to say about energy policy at the state level is that the biggest single leverage point you have is your Utility Commission and I think they ought to do three things one is to make sure that utilities focus on minimizing bills not necessarily rates. Although it'll usually turn out to minimize rates as well. It's okay. If you have to to have higher rates as long as they're more than offset by lower consumption through greater efficiency second. I think they should decouple utilities profits from their sales as California has done so they're not rewarded for selling more and they're not penalized for selling less and third if utility does something smart, like helping you get more efficient in a way that reduces your bills. They should be allowed to keep his extra profit part of what they say view so that they'll have an incentive for efficient Behavior a couple of callers on the line. Hello quickly. What's your question, (00:52:48) please? I was just wondering if he knew resources of food to get in touch with you go to home shows and you talked to five different people and they all feel their products are going to do the job for you. But how do you cut through all of the BS and get to the best product the things that he's talking about? (00:53:11) It's it's really tough to do on your own and that's why I want to see a lot greater utility involvement. Now, you can call NSP and for example, and they'll give you some advice and now that they're members of our update service. Maybe it will be better advised that it might have been a year ago. But you know, it takes a while for that information to filter through to the people who give you the advice so I can't really vouch for whether they're really up to date or not and what they'll tell you you can look in the Yellow Pages and try to find a good house doctor and Around see if there's a satisfied customers. What category would you looking? Oh energy conservation probably Sultan kind of the hotel but there are a lot of folks out there who have good intentions and don't really know what they're doing. Remember the Technology's changing incredibly fast. You can write to Rocky Mountain Institute and I think you'd find our resource efficient housing guide a very good way to get into the literature of the latest stuff. In fact, our newsletter four times a year as a feature every month on a certain aspect of new technologies and through the state and local energy offices. You may well be able to get good advice but with the technology so Dynamic it is really a challenge for all of us to keep up and make sure that we're telling you the best stuff now and not the best. Oh 5 or 10 years ago. Let's try to get through a couple more questions before we run out of time. Hello your next year on the air. (00:54:33) Yes. I have a question regarding home sighs code generators the words using An engine type device to heat the house and create electricity simultaneously for the price of just the energy alone. I live in a part of Minnesota where I'm supplied by Rural Electric Cooperative just like some of the previous callers mentioned and traditionally are our highest or Peak load is in the middle of winter when it's cold is too which is the opposite of the way it is in many of the Cities. So it would seem that our Electric Cooperative would welcome cogeneration, but they on the they (00:55:16) don't well they're that raises a whole host of issues home skill koujun may make economic sense and you'd have to do it on a case-by-case basis, but what would certainly make sense is to use extremely efficient lights appliances super insulation super Windows, we've done that and an eighty seven hundred degree day climate at 70 100 feet in the Rockies where it goes to Is 47 we have no heating system. Our electric bill at rates similar to yours is about 5 bucks a month for all the lights and appliances in the payback was ten months for five bucks. We'll send you a visitor's guide on how to do it. I'm going to ask you a quick question about producing energy producing electricity through the burning of garbage. That's a big issue. Of course in Minnesota and everywhere. It was believed to be a great technology at one point. Now people have some serious concerns about it. What's your view? Well, there are certainly some environmental concerns about it. But it also costs about twice as much as recycling. It's really sold to you by the people who found they couldn't sell you power plants anymore. So they wanted to build and sell something to look kind of like a power plant and quite often those plants come with with a deal or a contract that binds you not to recycle for 20 years. Well, it's ridiculous to get ourselves hooked on making as much garbage as we do now let alone making more of it and the institute for local self-reliance in Washington has excellent. Work by Neil Selman explaining why Mass burn plants are a lot more expensive than a good recycling program course David Morris who's now in the Twin Cities with I used to run that outfit. So I think their conclusions are correct in the mass Burns. Generally a bad deal. Well, I'm afraid we have run out of time. We thank you very much for coming in. I'll give now the address and phone numbers for the Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass of witch doctor Amory Lovins is the founder and research director 1739 Snowmass Creek Road Snowmass, Colorado 81654 leave the number of 3039273128 or apparently there's a phone machine at 9273851. Thanks again for coming in listeners in areas where there is a Twin Cities a Minnesota Public Radio rather news service station can hear a repeat of this program at nine o'clock tonight tomorrow on midday a listener call in and a documentary about Fish contamination in Minnesota as well as the comments from a non-game wildlife specialist from the DNR about aquatic wildlife and loons that's (00:57:48) tomorrow on (00:57:49) midday. Today's topic was energy and the environment with dr. Amory Lovins. Now let's hear from Gary eichten. Good afternoon. This Gary eichten. There are about 1,400 mentally retarded patients currently living in Minnesota's Regional treatment centers or state hospitals as they used to be called plans are underway to transfer at least some of those patients to community group homes. But how many of those people would actually benefit if they were moved we'll talk with two families involved in that issue this afternoon and NPR Journal also today we'll have the latest on plans to resolve the Twin Cities recycling dilemma. We invite you to tune in five o'clock in our music stations, 5:30 on our news stations this portion of Monday's midday was made possible by Cooperative power providing electricity for 17-member Cooperative serving West Central and Southern Minnesota in the weather for the state of Minnesota this afternoon, mostly cloudy with a slight chance for rain in the north and a better chance for rain in the Central and Southeast portions of the state eyes from near 70 in the extreme Southwest to the 40s along the north shore of Lake Superior tonight partly cloudy in the north to mostly cloudy in the South a small chance for rain in the South lows in the 40s. That is midday for today. Thanks to technical director is Patty Ray (00:59:00) Rudolph and Dave sleep (00:59:01) and also Sarah Mayer from adding the telephones. This is Steven Smith reporting. And you're listening to ksjn 1330 Minneapolis st. Paul this afternoon the Twin Cities a 20% chance for showers. 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