amory lovins solar quotes
Today we have a temporary aberration called “industrial capitalism” which is inadvertently liquidating its two most important sources of capital, the natural world and properly functioning societies.
“The Blue Economy 3.0: The Marriage of Science, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Creates a New Business Model That Transforms Society”. Book by Gunter Pauli, 2017. His reasoning is the precise reason why solar panels are so important. Instead of liquidating our diminishing resources, it uses the power of the sun which is virtually unlimited.
No sensible capitalist would do that.”
What if we could make energy do our work without working our undoing?”
“Climate Change: No Breakthroughs Needed”. sustainability.asu.edu. June 27, 2016.
We’ve got 21st century technology and speed colliding head-on with 20th and 19th century institutions, rules and cultures.”
https://www.azquotes.com/ The fossil fuel industry is a 19th century invention. Although renewables like solar and wind are common sense, these 19th century industries are very resistant.
If you ask me, it’d be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won’t give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other.”
Amory Lovins: Energy Analyst and Environmentalist”. The Plowboy Interview, www.motherearthnews.com. November/December 1977. I have never heard of anyone with this perspective, but it makes sense. If we harness the power of the sun through solar tech, and have virtually unlimited energy, we may do more harm than good.
The barriers that renewables and efficiency face come less from our living in a capitalist market economy and more from not taking market economics seriously.”
“Power Q&A: Amory Lovins”. Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. May/June 2008. The market economics of solar panels make sense, plain and simple!
Variable but forecastable renewables (wind and solar cells) are very reliable when integrated with each other, existing supplies and demand. For example, three German states were more than 30 percent wind-powered in 2007 – and more than 100 percent in some months. Mostly renewable power generally needs less backup than utilities already bought to combat big coal and nuclear plants’ intermittence.”
https://www.azquotes.com/
Any demanding high technology tends to develop influential and dedicated constituencies of those who link its commercial success with both the public welfare and their own. Such sincerely held beliefs, peer pressures, and the harsh demands that the work itself places on time and energy all tend to discourage such people from acquiring a similarly thorough knowledge of alternative policies and the need to discuss them.”
https://www.azquotes.com/
Our energy future is choice, not fate. Oil dependence is a problem we need no longer have-and it’s cheaper not to. U.S. oil dependence can be eliminated by proven and attractive technologies that create wealth, enhance choice, and strengthen common security.”
https://www.azquotes.com/ He is speaking here of renewable tech like solar panels (rooftop or solar farms), and wind.
Prominent exploration experts have recently predicted that total world production of liquid oil will peak by about the end of this decade-or a few years later if production does not rise much-and will decline thereafter.”
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Rely on renewable energy flows that are always there whether we use them or not, such as, sun, wind and vegetation: on energy income, not depletable energy capital.”
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Energy-saving technologies keep improving faster than they’re applied, so efficiency is an ever larger and cheaper resource”
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At the time the Danes decided to back wind power, the cost of electricity produced this way was many times greater than that produced by fossil fuels. The Danish government, however, could see its potential and supported the industry until costs came down. Today Denmark leads the world in both wind power production and the building of turbines; and wind now supplies 21 percent of the country’s electricity. One striking aspect of the way that wind power has developed there is that some 85 percent of the capacity is owned by individuals or wind cooperatives, and so power lies in the hands of the people.”
The Weather Makers (2005), Chapter 29 (p. 268)
There are two kinds of micropower. One is co-gen and combined heat and power. That was about two-thirds of the new capacity and three-quarters of the new electricity last year. The rest was distributed or decentralized renewables, which was a $38 billion U. S. global market last year for selling equipment. That’s wind, solar, geothermal, small hydro and biomass…. Micropower surpassed nuclear power in worldwide installed capacity in 2002, and surpassed nuclear in electricity generated per year just in the last few months.”
An interview with Amory Lovins re: Nuclear Power http://a4nr.org/news-and-events/10.22.2006-torontostar
I have some hopes for the future. One of the things I hope the new leader will address is an integrated energy policy, because we need to take advantage of the tremendous brainpower that we have amassed over the years relative to conventional and oil-sands oil and gas, and funnel those energies into alternate forms of energy for the future. By that I mean coal, coal gasification, coalbed methane, solar power, wind power, nuclear power, hydro power, all forms of energy other than conventional and oil-sands gas and oil.”
[Will The Real Alberta Please Stand Up, University of Alberta Press, 2010, 312, Geo Takach]