The Plowboy Interview with Amory Lovins
(Page 12 of 15)
November/December 1977
By the Mother Earth News editors
And don't forget that we have bad information all over the place. Many socalled "experts" don't realize what's happening in their own fields, or in other countries, or even down the hall! I go around in places like ERDAthe Energy Research and Development Administration— and I find I have to tell Mr. X that Ms. Y, who's one floor down and around the corner, has already solved his problem. I shouldn't have to do that.
And of course, on top of everything else, we've got these archaic energy prices which are based on what it has cost, historically, to do things rather than on what it will cost to do them. You see, if you clear away the institutional barriers I mentioned but continue to subsidize energy as we're doing now— so that oil, gas, and other fuels continue to appear artificially cheap-people will still tend not to look favorably on soft technologies.
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PLOWBOY: OK. So where do we go from here?
LOVINS: I think there are three initial steps we can—and should— take. First, we need to get busy correcting the institutional barriers we just talked about. It's not going to be easy. There are well over 3,000 building codes in the U.S., for example, and— obviously— it will take a long time to rewrite them ... but look at what happens if we don't rewrite them. That's the point. We end up with much worse problems down the road.
The second of the three things we ought to be doing is remove the subsidies from our conventional fuel and power supply systems, and enforce our antitrust laws. This—of course—is straight-down-the-line orthodox economics. It's nothing radical.
And, third, we ought to be moving toward energy prices based on longterm replacement costs. Again, this is orthodox economics.
As you can see, we're really talking about delving into all the rules and incentives and "habits of thought" —if you will—that govern the way the capital stock of the whole country has grown up . . . and then revamping a lot of them. It's quite an undertaking. And it won't be easy. It'll only be easier than not doing it.
PLOWBOY: What do you think of President Carter's National Energy Plan? Do you feel that it represents a formal commitment to a hard path?
LOVINS: I don't think so. I don't agree with Barry Commoner's analysis of that. There are details of the plan that I would quibble with, but overall I'm encouraged by it. It does—by putting energy conservation first-reflect a complete re-orientation of the American energy policy. That's a good first step.
PLOWBOY: But what about the parts of the Carter plan that deal with nuclear power?
LOVINS: It seems to me—just taking the plan at face valuethat the most significant thing the plan does about nuclear power is that it doesn't bail it out. If you want the nuclear industry in this country to survive, you have to give it a huge shot in the arm—about $100 billion—right away. Carter's plan doesn't do that. That's a very important omission.
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