Efficiency Is Our Best Untapped Energy Source

By Carole Bass, Yale Environment 360. Posted December 5, 2008.

CB: What is the importance of language choice in trying to spread these ideas and their adoption?

AL: It’s extremely important. For example, many, if not most, Americans think of the term "energy conservation" as connoting privation, discomfort and curtailment, that is, doing less, worse or without. So if what we mean is, as in my case, doing more and better with less energy and money, but with more brains and technology, then we should call it energy efficiency or raising energy productivity. Those terms are unambiguous. Similarly, if you are proposing to examine someone’s house or factory to look for energy saving opportunities, I’d suggest do not call it an energy audit, which makes people think of the IRS, perhaps an energy survey would be more interesting.

CB:What about coinages like fee-bates and negawatts?

AL: I think they’re in fairly common usage by now, especially "negawatts," which was a typo I spotted in a Colorado PUC document several decades ago and spread around, or the economists’ term "micro-power" to embrace both co-generation and distributive renewables is a very useful term. But for people not in the energy business they are jargony, so instead of negawatts, we can say just "saved electricity."

CB:So the term negawatts actually came to you by spotting a typo?

AL: Yes, they meant to type megawatts, but it came out negawatts, and I said: What a nice term! Let’s use it!

CB: Do you find that people respond to that? You used the word jargony, for me it sounds gimmicky…

AL: Well, tastes differ.

CB: How do you find people respond to it?

AL: Generally, very well. I talked to a wide range of audiences and for some it is not appropriate. You have to speak to people’s concerns in their language.

CB: How do we get people to focus on these issues right now, given everything else that’s going on in the country and the world?

AL: By speaking to their concerns in their language. If they are concerned about national security, energy efficiency is probably the best way to get it. If they are concerned about education, they may like to know that students learn 20 odd percent faster in well day-lit classrooms and efficient schools have money left to hire teachers and buy books. If they are concerned about climate protection, they may like to know that energy efficiency can provide it not at a cost but at a profit. There are arguments here for essentially every constituency and political view. I think it is important to get the result, not to get it for the reason you want. That is, the core truth of today’s energy dilemma is that whether you care about security, climate or prosperity, you should do exactly the same things about energy. There is no trade-off or compromise required. Any one or more of those motives would lead to the same actions, and for that matter the same is true, if you care about peak oil and other depletion issues.

CB: Living in Colorado, I assume, you need to drive, is that right? What do you drive?

AL: I drive a 2001 Honda Insight aluminum hybrid that is rated at 64 miles a gallon. I am driving in a lot of snow and slush and mostly in snow tires, and it gets 61-point-something.

CB: How does that get that mileage?

AL: Well, it weighs only 1889 pounds. It happens to be a two-seater because that’s all I need. And it has a very efficient, slightly-under-one-liter engine with an electric hybrid, boosted by a 10-kilowatt motor on the upper shaft, and it’s got also a very good aerodynamics and tires. It is rated (mileage) the highest in the market, although they pulled it off the market some months ago, because it sold poorly… not because it isn’t a great car, but because the two-seat segment in extremely small. But they are going to replace it under the same name with a four- or five-seat hybrid. They have a habit of producing the most efficient cars on the market in any given time. And, of course, they are in a race with Toyota and everybody else to do that. More importantly, though, I don’t commute by car, because my trip to work is 10 meters across the jungle in the middle of my passive solar banana farm.

CB: And how long has that been your situation?

AL: Oh, let’s see. We moved in in January 1984, after a year and a half of construction. So that would be 24 years, now almost 25. I’ve saved a lot of commuting by now. The car has, I think, 3,000 miles a year, most of which is driving to and from the airport. Then I took a lot of video conferencing, rather than flying. Just move the electrons and leave the heavy nuclei at home.

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