The Plowboy Interview with Amory Lovins
(Page 5 of 15)
November/December 1977
By the Mother Earth News editors
LOVINS: With a soft energy path based on three components ... components that—when you put them together—form a whole greater than the sum of the parts. The three components are—first—very greatly increased efficiency in energy use ... second, the rapid introduction of what I call "soft technologies", which I'll define in a minute ... and third, the transitional use of fossil fuels to buy the time needed to deploy the soft technologies.
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I don't need to say too much about the first component, except that I'm talking not just about increasing the gas mileage of cars or the efficiency of electric toasters ... I'm talking about reducing the enormous losses that occur when you convert primary energy—in the form of coal, petroleum, and so on—into gasoline and electricity. The losses that occur in converting primary energy to end—use energy have been increasing dramatically over the past few decades, and if we do nothing about it these losses will go on increasing until they take up over half of all future energy growth.
PLOWBOY: In other words, one of the biggest energy wasters in our present society is our own energy industry!
LOVINS: Precisely. In Britain, for example, the energy industries are the largest energy consumers. In England, more than half the growth in energy production that's occurred since 1900 has gone to fuel the fuel industries.
PLOWBOY: Wow!
LOVINS: Now obviously, this kind of thing can't be allowed to go on. We can't continue to fuel the fuel industry at an ever-increasing rate, and the rest of society can't continue to consume energy at an ever-increasing rate. It has to end somewhere.
PLOWBOY: I take it, then, you feel that zero or negative growth in the rate of energy use in the U.S. is a desirable and achievable goal.
LOVINS: Absolutely. And of course, that means we're going to have to learn how to do more with less. But it doesn't necessarily mean that we'll have to give up a lot of things that are dear to us. I hear that fear expressed quite often. Some people feel that civilization in the U.S. would be inconceivable if we used only, say, half as much electricity as we do now . . . and yet that is what we did use in 1963, when Americans were at least half as civilized as they are at present.
PLOWBOY: OK. A minute ago, you promised to define the term "soft technologies".
LOVINS: Right. Soft technologies have five defining characteristics. Number one, they're diverse ... that is, we're talking about a large number of individual technologies, each doing what it does best, and none trying to be a panacea. Second, soft technologies rely on renewable energy flows sunlight, wind, vegetation, and the like — rather than on depletable fuels.
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