Economic Geology Analogy:
Economic geologists define reserves as the identified deposits profitably extractable with current technology and price. Energy analysts narrowly define reserves of energy efficiency similarly.

Missing Majority:
The actual energy efficiency reserves are several fold larger than typically recognized or captured. This hidden majority can be exploited by integrative design.

Cost Advantage:
Unlike oil or copper, most new energy efficiency reserves actually cost less than current production. This is because they come from using fewer and simpler widgets, more artfully chosen, combined, timed, and sequenced.

Unleashing Creativity:
Edwin Land emphasized the importance of shedding assumptions and preconceptions to generate new ideas. A classic creative thinking exercise involves connecting nine dots with just four lines without lifting the pen from the paper. One student solved this problem in just three lines by thinking outside the box.

Conclusion:
Energy efficiency reserves are vast and largely untapped. Integrative design can unlock these reserves at a lower cost than conventional approaches. Creativity and unconventional thinking are essential for discovering innovative solutions.

Problem Solving and Creativity:
The problem of connecting nine dots with four straight lines was solved in various creative ways, such as folding the paper, using a long line, cutting out the dots and impaling them, crumpling the paper and stabbing it repeatedly, and using a thick line. The late Paul McCready emphasized the importance of avoiding the tyranny of the word “the” and finding more elegant and frugal solutions.

Energy-Efficient House Design:
The author’s house in Colorado utilizes super insulation, ventilation, heat recovery, and super windows to achieve 99% passive solar heating and eliminate the need for a heating system. The house has a central atrium that produces passive solar banana crops and has inspired many European passive buildings. Integrative design allows for multiple benefits from each expenditure, such as the arch holding up the middle of the house having 12 functions but only one cost.

Empire State Building Retrofit:
The Empire State Building retrofit saved 38% of its energy with a three-year payback by remanufacturing windows into super windows, improving lights and office equipment, and renovating smaller chillers. The cost-effective retrofit made the building more efficient than the best new U.S. office at NREL.

Building Energy Savings:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the best European new builds and retrofits save up to 90% or more of energy without raising costs. Deep retrofits of buildings can be cost-effective and should be timed to coincide with routine renovations to maximize savings.

Automobile Energy Efficiency:
Only a fifth of a modern car’s fuel energy reaches the wheels, with most losses occurring due to air resistance, tire and road friction, and acceleration/braking. Reducing tractive load by lightweighting the vehicle is more effective and rewarding than improving the powertrain. Ultra-strong carbon fiber composites can be used to reduce the weight of an automobile by at least two-thirds without compromising crash safety.

Carbon Fiber Composites in Automaking:
Carbon fiber composites are being explored for use in automaking, but the industry requires much higher volume and lower costs than the aerospace sector, which uses carbon fiber extensively.

Dave Taggart’s Design:
In the early 1990s, Dave Taggart led the design of a 95% carbon fiber tactical fighter airframe that was significantly lighter and cheaper than its metal counterpart, but this concept was rejected by the Joint Strike Fighter community.

Virtual Design of an Ultralight Carbon Fiber Hypercar:
The speaker hired Dave Taggart to lead the virtual design of an ultralight carbon fiber electrified hypercar, which resulted in a midsize SUV with four to six times the efficiency of a conventional SUV.

Toyota’s Carbon Fiber Plug-in Hybrid Sedan:
Toyota designed a carbon fiber plug-in hybrid sedan that was 70% lighter than a Prius with the same volume, demonstrating the potential for carbon fiber in mass-produced vehicles.

Carbon Fiber Electric Cars in Mass Production:
Carbon fiber electric cars entered mass production in 2013 with a profitable model offering 124 miles per gallon equivalent.

Lightweight Aluminum Hybrid Vans:
Even with conventional materials, lightweight aluminum hybrid vans can save a significant amount of fuel and eliminate the need for subsidies.

BMW’s Carbon Fiber Electric Car:
BMW produced a carbon fiber electric car, the I-3, which reportedly made money from the first unit off the assembly line and was praised by industry experts for its significance and advanced features.

Benefits of Carbon Fiber Electric Cars:
Carbon fiber electric cars have several advantages, including lower battery requirements, faster recharging, weight savings, manufacturing efficiency, and improved worker conditions.

Synergies Between Ultralight Materials and Electric Traction:
The combination of ultralight materials and electric traction results in quadrupled efficiency without compromising performance and offers driver advantages.

Design Spiral for Lightweight Vehicles:
To achieve a lightweight vehicle, designers must go through multiple iterations of the design cycle, reducing weight at each stage to enable further weight reduction and eliminate unnecessary components.

Policy Implications:
Conventional technology-by-technology analysis for efficiency policies often misses the potential of integrative whole vehicle designs. Integrative design can double to quadruple fuel savings at lower costs compared to part-by-part analysis. Current efficiency standards are more conservative than previously thought, and electrification can be cheaper and faster with lighter platforms.

Industry Retrofits and New Builds:
Industrial retrofits designed by the speaker’s team typically found 30-60% energy savings with a payback period of a few years. New builds can achieve 40-90% plus energy savings with lower capital costs compared to conventional approaches. These results are superior to typical energy service company retrofits.

Improvements in Pipe and Ducts:
Optimized pipe and duct designs can save about 80-90% of friction, potentially saving half the world’s coal-fired electricity. These improvements can pay back in less than a year for industrial retrofits and immediately for new builds.

Blackbird Example:
Kelly Johnson’s design philosophy for the Blackbird aircraft illustrates the importance of jumping to a new design space rather than incrementally improving existing designs.

Design Implications:
Ultralight designs can be achieved at minimal cost through mass decompounding and simplification, offsetting the higher manufacturing costs of carbon fiber and advanced composite structures. Designers must be organized differently and design for the future rather than the past to achieve transformative results.

Design as a Scaling Vector:
Design can be utilized as a scaling vector to make things large and fast, but this aspect is often overlooked and underutilized.

Simple Design Methods for Energy Efficiency:
In piping systems, rearranging the layout to minimize bends and valves can significantly reduce friction and energy consumption. Peter Rumsey’s retrofit of the Oakland Museum’s piping system resulted in a 75% reduction in pumping energy and eliminated 15 pumps, leading to substantial energy and maintenance cost savings. Laying out supply pipes as if they were drains can help minimize friction and improve efficiency.

Compounding Savings:
Savings in flow or friction in pipes lead to compounding savings in fuel costs, emissions, and global warming at the power plant. As one moves upstream, components become smaller and cheaper, resulting in reduced capital costs.

Energy Losses in Data Centers:
In data centers, two-thirds of the fuel fed into the power plant is lost in the plant and the grid. Half of the metered electricity is lost in the cooling system and uninterruptible power supplies. Half of the server energy is lost in inefficient power supplies and fans due to underutilized computing resources. Severe underutilization of computing resources, inefficient virtualization, and bloatware further contribute to energy wastage.

Efficiency Gains:
Optimizing code and compilation can save two orders of magnitude in compute cycles. Quadrupling server efficiency and reducing cooling needs can lead to significant energy savings. Fuel cell tri-generation can save half the utility losses, replacing uninterruptible power supplies. Multiplying these savings from downstream to upstream can result in a 100-fold energy savings.

Integrated Design in Energy Supply:
Integrated design can transform energy supply technology. The Shine team’s work on Photovoltaic’s balance of system cost enabled DOE’s SunShot program. The latest 2×8 module solar packet or solar Lego block design has 98% fewer parts and is highly optimized for shipping, installation, and wind loads.

Community-Scale PV Systems:
Community-scale PV systems can match or beat wholesale prices without transmission lines. They can feed unsubsidized power straight into the distribution system at a low cost.

Integrated Design’s Potential Impact:
A study showed that integrated design could triple U.S. energy efficiency and quintuple renewables by 2050, leading to significant economic growth and carbon emission reductions. The first seven years of this 40-year journey are on track, with the private sector motivated by the potential economic benefits.

China’s Energy Revolution:
China’s roadmap for energy revolution, informed by international research, aims to save $3 trillion, grow the economy, and reduce carbon emissions. It has influenced the 13th Five-Year Plan and is expected to have a major impact on China’s energy future.

Global Implications:
Extrapolating these findings to the rest of the world could lead to a two-degree climate trajectory while providing better energy services at a lower cost. Reinvesting in natural systems carbon removal could reach the Paris Agreement’s 1.5-degree target while achieving many UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Conclusion:
Energy efficiency through integrated design can make climate protection profitable and simplify the politics of climate action.

The Changing Market:
Vanishing demand for fossil fuels and cars will stress affected industries. Value exceeding price is crucial for businesses to succeed. Market shifts can be rapid; the horse and buggy industry’s decline is an example.

Technological Advancements:
Rapid cost reduction in solar panels and innovative financing have accelerated the adoption of rooftop solar. The rise of electric vehicles (EVs) is disrupting the traditional automotive industry.

The Role of Incumbents and Insurgents:
Transformation is driven by insurgents, not incumbents, due to legacy constraints. Investors flee from incumbents before customers due to disruption concerns.

CarbonTracker’s Analysis:
Fast-growing challengers capture all growth in slow-growing markets. Incumbent sales peak when challengers reach around 3% market share. Investors seek growth, leading to divestment before sales stagnation.

Renewables as Disruptive Technologies:
Renewables are transforming the global energy system. Investors in incumbent energy companies face risks due to renewables’ rapid growth. Electric cars are seen as the inevitable successor to traditional vehicles.

Modular and Scalable Challengers:
Modular, scalable, and mass-producible challengers can achieve rapid growth and increasing returns. These attributes allow new entrants to displace established incumbents.

Tesla’s Success:
Tesla’s market cap surpassed Ford’s and GM’s despite selling fewer cars. Electric cars, with just 2% US market share, are seen as the future, challenging incumbents.

Call to Action:
Encourage the new energy system to transform at the pace of design and software. Avoid protecting the old system, which hinders progress. Leverage the ambition of insurgents to drive change.