Speaker Introductions:
Ralph Cavanaugh will introduce Amory Lovins in a series of five lectures. Steve Klein, Senior Environment Officer at Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), was invited by Amory to speak about the energy efficiency potential and opportunities in the industrial sector.

PG&E’s Environmental Leadership:
PG&E, once known for its controversial past, is now the world’s largest investor in energy efficiency. Fortune magazine named PG&E the nation’s greenest utility. PG&E received an award from the Natural Resources Defense Council for leadership in environmental performance.

Steve Klein’s Personal Reflections:
Steve Klein considers Amory Lovins a hero. Amory’s insights have significantly influenced PG&E’s climate change policy, allowing the company to lead in this area.

Historical Context:
In the 1980s, electricity demand was growing rapidly, and engineers planned to build more power plants. Amory Lovins challenged this paradigm by promoting energy efficiency as a resource.

Amory Lovins’ Impact:
Amory’s concept of “megawatts efficiency” transformed the industry’s thinking about energy resources. His ideas continue to greatly impact PG&E and the entire energy industry.

Challenges in Industrial Resource Utilization:
The high volume of materials processed, used, and discarded by industries poses significant environmental and economic challenges. The current system of processing materials results in a 99.98% waste rate, with minimal recycling and reuse. The extraction of raw materials, particularly minerals, leads to substantial losses during mining and manufacturing processes. Only a small fraction of the original mass flow remains in products providing value after six months, highlighting the inefficiencies in resource utilization.

Design Principles for Sustainable Industrial Practices:
Radical Resource Productivity: The first design principle emphasizes the need to increase resource productivity by extracting more work from each unit of energy, minerals, water, and other resources. Aiming for 4, 10, or even 100 times the output from the same input resources. Closed-Loop Production: The second design principle advocates for adopting closed-loop production systems, mimicking nature’s approach of no waste and no toxicity. This involves designing products and processes that eliminate waste and minimize the use of toxic materials.

Reinforcement through Solutions Economy Business Models:
Solutions economy business models reward both providers and customers for achieving more and better results with fewer resources over an extended period. This approach promotes continuous improvement, innovation, and competitiveness. Companies that embrace these principles often gain a significant competitive advantage.

Addressing Waste and Toxicity:
The current system of material processing results in a vast amount of waste, with only a small fraction being recycled or reused. Toxic waste poses significant threats to the regenerative capacity of natural ecosystems, affecting food and fiber production and ecosystem services.

Opportunities for Improvement:
Redesigning industrial systems based on natural capitalist principles offers significant opportunities for improvement. This includes increasing the use of renewable resources, minimizing extraction, improving efficiency in harvesting and extraction processes, and recapturing resources through remanufacturing and reuse. Dematerializing products and extending their lifespan can further reduce the flow of materials required to meet demand. Eliminating waste and toxicity enhances natural capital’s regenerative capacity and supports the long-term sustainability of industrial practices.

Case Study: Chip Fabrication Plant Energy Efficiency
A colleague and teacher, Mr. Lee, in Singapore, demonstrated a remarkable 69% reduction in energy use per chip in a back-end chip fabrication plant within a year.

Improvement Opportunities in Semiconductor Factories:
Amory Lovins highlights a world-class chip fab in Singapore that achieved a payback period of under a year through energy-saving measures. The savings were so significant that they provided 80% of the energy supply capacity needed to expand the plant’s output threefold, with 80% of the improvements paying back in just 18 months. The improvements were made while operating the plant continuously on a three-shift basis.

Challenges and Solutions:
The fab was initially designed using a standard process called “infectious repetitis,” which involved copying previous drawings instead of implementing continuous improvement. This approach limited the potential for energy efficiency gains, as the design was not optimized for the specific needs of the fab.

Hyatt Hotel Energy Efficiency:
Mr. Lee’s experience with the Hyatt Hotel in Singapore demonstrated that efficiency improvements could lead to substantial energy savings. By optimizing the design and sizing of equipment, as well as implementing efficient controls, he was able to reduce fan and pump power consumption by 92%, resulting in a rapid payback period.

Key Areas for Energy Efficiency:
Mr. Lee identified several areas where energy efficiency improvements could be made in semiconductor factories and other industries, including: Thermal integration Distributed and unusual power systems Designing friction out of pipes and ducts Integrating water and energy systems Super-efficient refrigeration Heat-driven refrigeration Very efficient drive systems Advanced controls Right-sizing equipment

Analogy to Jumbo Jets:
Mr. Lee compared the design of semiconductor factories to the design of jumbo jets. He emphasized the importance of precisely measuring loads and designing accordingly, rather than adding unnecessary components and oversizing equipment. This approach is essential for achieving optimal performance and efficiency.

Focus on Pumping Systems:
The chapter will focus on pumping systems as an example of how energy efficiency improvements can be achieved in various industries.

The Importance of Quantifying Energy Efficiency:
Understanding the value of energy efficiency is crucial for making informed investment decisions. Accurate metrics should be used to guide investments in efficiency measures. Without proper metrics, it is difficult to determine the appropriate level of efficiency to pursue.

The Power of Measurement:
Simple and inexpensive measurements can lead to significant energy savings. Labeling light switches and providing operators with relevant information can have a major impact. Many plants waste energy and resources due to a lack of measurement and monitoring.

Measurement Challenges:
Poor or uncalibrated sensors can lead to inaccurate measurements. Many plants are not designed to measure critical parameters effectively. Real-time graphics and effective data presentation are often lacking.

Technological Advancements:
The potential for electricity savings has increased significantly over time. The cost of energy-saving technologies has decreased substantially. Mass production, competition, and technological improvements have driven down costs. Examples of cost reductions in various energy-saving technologies are provided.

The Untapped Potential of Design Integration:
Design integration in buildings can lead to significant energy savings at a lower cost. This approach is often overlooked and underutilized.

Hardware Advancements:
Electromechanical actuators and digital hydraulic systems offer significant performance and energy-saving advantages over traditional hydraulics. Novel rotor designs for fluid flow applications, inspired by nature’s laminar vortex flow, can enhance efficiency and reduce noise in devices like computer fans.

System Design Principles:
Questioning the business vision, model, strategy, and culture can lead to identifying unnecessary tasks and optimizing energy usage. Prioritizing demand reduction, passive systems, and whole-system performance over subsystem optimization can yield multiple benefits and cost savings. Redesigning existing facilities and designing new ones with a focus on energy efficiency can result in substantial energy savings and cost reductions.

Challenging Assumptions:
Contrary to economic theory, more efficient components and equipment often don’t come at a higher cost, making energy-saving investments even more attractive. Combining components into systems strategically can lead to big savings at lower costs, bypassing the diminishing returns often associated with individual components.

Design Mentality Shift:
Rethinking design approaches can lead to innovative solutions that significantly reduce energy consumption. Using larger pipes and smaller pumps, instead of the traditional approach of smaller pipes and bigger pumps, can minimize friction losses and save energy in fluid flow systems.

Design for the Whole System, Not Just Components:
Optimizing components individually can lead to suboptimal overall system performance and higher costs. The capital cost of a pumping system decreases with the fifth power of the pipe diameter, while the pipe’s capital cost increases with the second power of its diameter. Optimizing the pipe size alone leads to a bigger pump and higher energy consumption. The system should be optimized as a whole, considering the capital cost of both the pipe and the pumping equipment.

Lay Out Pipes First, Then Equipment:
Traditional design places equipment first, then connects them with pipes, resulting in longer and more complex piping systems. This layout leads to increased friction, higher pumping energy, and more heat loss. By laying out pipes first, followed by equipment, the piping system can be shorter, straighter, and have lower friction, reducing pumping energy and heat loss.

Benefits Beyond Energy Savings:
Optimizing the whole system can lead to additional benefits, such as reduced structure requirements, quieter operation, easier maintenance, and longer equipment life. These benefits are often overlooked in traditional design approaches.

Half to One Order of Magnitude Savings:
Optimizing whole systems for multiple benefits typically results in half to one order of magnitude energy and resource savings. The capital cost of the optimized system is often lower, leading to better performance at a lower cost.

Casebook of High-Brained Velcro Examples:
Amory Lovins and colleagues are compiling a casebook of examples of whole system optimization for energy efficiency and cost savings. The goal is to nonviolently overthrow bad engineering practices and promote better design methodologies. Interested individuals with relevant cases or expertise are encouraged to contribute to the effort.

Pedagogic Error:
Traditional engineering education often focuses on optimizing isolated components, leading to a lack of understanding of whole system optimization. This error is reflected in the textbooks used in engineering education.

Optimizing System Design:
Traditional approaches to designing individual components, like pipes or insulation, often neglect the impact on the overall system and lifecycle costs. Misdesigning systems due to this oversight has led to significant financial losses, exemplified by the $9 trillion worth of houses misdesigned with this mistake.

Lifecycle Costing:
Businesses commonly ignore lifecycle costing, focusing solely on upfront costs while ignoring operating costs over time. This mistake leads to overlooking opportunities for long-term savings and increased efficiency.

Pumping Systems and Energy Savings:
Pumping is the world’s largest use of motors, consuming a substantial portion of global electricity. Significant energy savings can be achieved by focusing on downstream savings beyond the motor and pump, starting with minimizing flow and friction. Downstream savings have a compounding effect, resulting in significant energy and cost reductions throughout the system.

Minimizing Flow and Friction:
Every unit of flow or friction saved in a pipe can result in 10 times the savings in energy, cost, and pollution at the power plant. Reducing flow and friction also leads to smaller, simpler, and cheaper equipment, further reducing capital costs.

Practical Examples of Energy Efficiency:
Cooling a methane plant in a desert: Covering the site with white sand instead of dark concrete and asphalt can save $59 million present value by reducing heat absorption. Painting cryo plumbing white instead of using shiny stainless steel can improve infrared emissivity, reducing energy loss. Optimizing an ice cream plant: Separating the compressors from the insulated box containing the plumbing can reduce the need for excessive cooling. Utilizing free cooling methods, such as evaporative cooling, can eliminate the need for chillers altogether.

High-Efficiency Cooling Systems:
Well-designed systems using alternative cooling methods can achieve 125 or more units of cooling per unit of electricity, far exceeding the efficiency of chiller systems. In temperate climates, digging a hole, insulating it, and using snowmaking equipment can provide efficient cooling without the need for chillers.

Reducing Flow and Friction:
Implementing ice storage systems for cooling applications, offering significant energy savings compared to traditional chiller systems. Utilizing solar or wasted process heat to power cooling systems, achieving high efficiency and reducing electricity consumption.

Minimizing Pipe Bends and Valves:
Avoiding right-angle bends and unnecessary valves in piping systems to reduce friction and improve flow efficiency. Designing pipe layouts that prioritize smooth flow and minimize bends, resulting in energy savings.

Optimizing Pipe Surface Finish:
Using smooth pipe surfaces and gradual bends to minimize friction and improve flow characteristics. Eliminating fittings and reducing elbows to further reduce friction and enhance flow efficiency.

Choosing Efficient Pump Designs:
Replacing inefficient globe valves with ball valves, offering significantly lower friction and cost savings. Utilizing lobe valves for control purposes, coupled with electronic adjustable speed drives, instead of throttling flow. Eliminating redundant and balancing valves to reduce system complexity and improve efficiency.

Optimizing Pump Size and Operation:
Selecting pumps that are appropriately sized for the actual operating conditions, avoiding oversized pumps that waste energy. Utilizing adjustable speed drives to optimize pump performance and maintain efficiency across varying load conditions. Employing multiple pumps with different sizes and capacities to handle varying loads more efficiently.

Adopting Biomimetic Rotor Designs:
Implementing biomimetic rotor designs in pumps, which offer improved efficiency and performance compared to traditional rotor designs.

Additional Strategies:
Regularly checking and maintaining pumps to ensure optimal performance and efficiency. Implementing proper pump control strategies to match pump operation to system requirements. Considering energy recovery systems to capture and reuse waste heat from pumps for other applications.

Pump Sizing and Design:
Size the pump appropriately for the current flow rate and design it to allow for easy upsizing if needed. Ensure adequate straight pipe runs before and after the pump to maintain laminar flow. Avoid unnecessary fittings that can disrupt flow.

Retrofitting Existing Systems:
When retrofitting a system with existing piping, reducing flow through the same pipes effectively oversizes the pipe. This reduces friction and energy use without the need to replace the pipe.

Multiple Pumps and Adjustable Speed Drives:
Consider using multiple pumps of different sizes to match varying load requirements. Adjustable speed drives allow pumps to operate at optimal speeds, reducing energy consumption.

Motor Efficiency and Control:
High-efficiency motors are not always optimal; only the best-in-class efficiency motors should be used. Adjustable speed drives provide flexibility and can save energy in many applications.

Economic Benefits:
Investing in energy-efficient motors and adjustable speed drives can yield significant cost savings. A one percentage point improvement in an induction motor’s efficiency can save around $70 per kilowatt, present value.

Case Study:
A study of a chip fab revealed a significant gap between the efficiency of the motors used and the best-in-class motors available on the market.

Introduction:
Amory Lovins presents the findings of a study conducted at a typical 15-year-old plant, revealing a substantial gap between the actual performance of motors and their potential efficiency. The study highlights the significant financial benefits of implementing energy-saving measures.

Motor Efficiency and Potential Savings:
Retrofitting induction motors with adjustable speed drives can yield significant energy savings, potentially reducing electricity consumption by 6.8 percentage points. However, this represents only a fraction of the total savings achievable.

Additional Benefits of Motor Retrofits:
Beyond energy savings, motor retrofits offer 33 additional types of improvements that can double the savings and reduce the cost by fivefold. These non-energy benefits often outweigh the direct energy savings.

Addressing Motor Oversizing:
Half of the industrial motors operate below 60% of their rated load, indicating that they are oversized. This oversizing is attributed to conservative design practices and the fear of making motors too small.

Downsizing Motors:
Downsizing motors to the appropriate size can result in significant energy savings. PG&E developed a procedure to accurately determine the required motor size, enabling the use of smaller motors in many cases.

Impact of Motor Oversizing:
Oversized motors contribute to higher energy consumption, increased maintenance costs, and reduced reliability. Additionally, they occupy more space and generate more noise.

Conclusion:
Motor retrofits can unlock substantial energy savings and offer a range of additional benefits beyond energy efficiency. By addressing motor oversizing and implementing comprehensive retrofit measures, organizations can significantly improve their motor performance and overall operational efficiency.

Efficiency Matters:
Premium efficiency motors have flatter efficiency and higher power factor over a range of load, resulting in cooler operation, longer life, and reduced distribution losses.

Benefits of Premium Efficiency Motors:
18 benefits include avoided iron loss, less susceptibility to harmonics, tolerance of unbalanced voltage, reduced cooling and air handling loads, and more.

Additional Considerations:
Proper installation, lubrication, and maintenance practices are essential for optimal motor performance. Synchronous belts can significantly reduce losses and maintenance compared to V-belts. Eliminating belts, fans, and pumps can further enhance energy savings.

Motor-Specific Savings:
Motor-specific savings represent a significant gap in conventional retrofitting. A comprehensive approach that considers distribution losses and motor-specific savings can yield substantial savings at low cost.

Improvements Beyond Motor Replacement:
Upgrading valves, reoptimizing pumps and motors, and implementing digital controls can improve flow control, process efficiency, and uptime.

Systems Analysis Approach:
Systems analysis has been applied to nearly all other major end uses of electricity, revealing opportunities for significant savings at low cost.

Introduction:
Amory Lovins presents two case studies highlighting energy-saving opportunities in an industrial retrofit of an LNG plant and a new data center.

LNG Plant Energy Losses:
In the LNG plant, 73% of energy is lost as heat, with only 19% used for actual production. The main source of energy loss is power generation, with inefficient gas turbines operating at part load.

Optimizing Turbine Efficiency:
By saving electricity and managing loads, the number of gas turbines required can be reduced, resulting in improved efficiency. Virtual trail shafting allows a spare turbine to be kept rotating synchronously, reducing startup time and ensuring redundancy.

Innovative Filter Cleaning:
A unique method of filter cleaning using a woofer loudspeaker and a fast rise square wave pulse was implemented, replacing the inefficient use of compressed air.

Conclusion:
These case studies demonstrate the potential for significant energy savings through innovative approaches and optimization techniques in industrial settings.

Efficiency Measures:
Utilizing combined cycle power generation and evaporative cooling to optimize gas turbines. Integrating thermal processes for cooling, desalination, and electricity generation. Maximizing heat recovery and cascaded use of heat at various temperatures. Improving fin fan efficiency through aerodynamic design, misting, and motor optimization. Recovering pressure letdowns and expansions using turbo expanders. Implementing motor and pump improvements, compressor controls, and heat exchange optimization. Reducing compressed air usage and optimizing its efficiency.

Additional Opportunities:
Exploring the potential of superconducting motors and laminar vortex flow devices for energy-efficient fluid circulation. Analyzing plant reliability, production flexibility, and storage requirements. Investigating cascading cryo chillers to enhance efficiency.

Integrated Approach:
Implementing a comprehensive approach that combines end-use efficiency, combined cycle power generation, ammonia absorption chillers, evaporative cooling, and water distillation. Utilizing cooling towers and micro-misting techniques to enhance cooling efficiency. Optimizing the integration of various processes and systems to achieve a holistic, energy-efficient design.

Data Center Energy Usage:
Data centers consumed about 1.2% of U.S. electricity in 2005, equaling nearly $3 billion annually. Globally, data centers accounted for a little less than 1% of electricity usage. The population of data centers doubled between 2000 and 2005, leading to a slight increase in power consumption.

Design Charrette for Energy Savings:
A design charrette in San Jose in 2003 demonstrated how to save approximately 89% of energy used by a typical data center while making it more affordable and reliable. The key factor was using efficient power supplies, potentially making the facility a net power producer. Charging tenants by the watt instead of square foot encourages efficient use of space and proper cooling.

Power Supply and Cooling Overhead:
Intel estimates that for every 100 watts of IT equipment load, an additional 175 watts are needed for power supply, cooling, and air handling. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab measurements show an overhead of 80-90%, lower than Intel’s estimate. Support systems for power supply and cooling account for around 75-80% of a data center’s capital cost.

Efficient Power Supplies in Computers:
Chips generate significant heat, leading to the need for efficient power supplies and cooling systems. Using a highly efficient power supply in a desktop computer can eliminate the need for a fan, resulting in a silent and more secure system. Replacing multiple Windows-based computers with a single, efficient Linux-based system can save 98-99% of energy while offering increased speed and capability.

Example of Energy Savings:
A standard 2003-vintage Wintel server had a 160-watt power supply and nine fans for cooling. By implementing energy-efficient measures, this server’s energy consumption could be significantly reduced.

Background:
Amory Lovins discusses the benefits of using the Transmeta Crusoe chip for high-density, energy-efficient computing solutions.

Improved Efficiency and Density:
The Transmeta Crusoe chip, with its high mile per gallon and long instruction word, enables the creation of server blades that consume significantly less power than traditional Wintel solutions. By using these chips, it is possible to fit 72 blades in just 9u of height, resulting in a compact and efficient system.

Case Study: Dr. Fung’s Server Cabinet:
Dr. Fung at Los Alamos demonstrated the effectiveness of the Transmeta Crusoe chip by building a server cabinet containing 240 blade servers. This setup occupied only five square feet of floor space and consumed 3.2 kilowatts of power, comparable to two hair dryers. The system achieved 160 peak gigaflops, with the potential to reach 240 gigaflops after an upgrade, making it a capable computing solution.

Reliability and Cost-Effectiveness:
The Transmeta Crusoe-based system exhibited exceptional uptime, with 100% availability for two years in a challenging environment. The reduced power consumption resulted in significant savings in support costs, contributing to a three or four times lower total cost of ownership compared to traditional solutions.

Comparison with Supercomputers:
Amory Lovins draws a comparison between the energy-efficient Transmeta Crusoe-based system and powerful supercomputers like the Q computer. While the Transmeta Crusoe system may not match the performance of supercomputers, it offers comparable capabilities with significantly lower energy consumption.

Reliability and Failure Rates:
Amory Lovins emphasizes the importance of considering reliability and failure rates when evaluating computing systems. He highlights that a more efficient system with a longer mean time between failures can outperform faster systems that experience frequent breakdowns. Additionally, every 10 degrees Celsius reduction in operating temperature roughly doubles the hardware’s lifespan, further enhancing reliability.

Conclusion:
The Transmeta Crusoe chip offers a compelling solution for energy-efficient computing, enabling the creation of compact, reliable, and cost-effective systems that rival the capabilities of supercomputers while consuming significantly less power.

Cooling Methods:
Multiple data center cooling methods exist, including air side and water side economizers, desiccant absorption, water-cooled central chiller systems, and radiant heat transfer systems. Water-based cooling is more efficient than air-based cooling due to higher heat capacity and lower energy requirements for heat transfer.

Heat Removal Techniques:
Heat pipes and liquid cooling can effectively remove heat from dense computing loads. Optimizing equipment design and using efficient heat sinks can reduce the energy needed for cooling. Proper airflow management can significantly reduce cooling energy consumption.

Improving Equipment Efficiency:
Designing equipment to operate at higher temperatures allows for passive heat dissipation, eliminating the need for fans. Virtualization can consolidate multiple functions onto a single server, reducing the number of servers and cooling requirements. Placing critical equipment at the bottom of racks and enabling power management features can further enhance efficiency.

Using Science-Based Specs:
Humidity levels should be based on the actual requirements of the equipment, avoiding unnecessary dehumidification or humidification.

Implementing Energy-Saving Strategies:
Variable speed drives, demand-controlled ventilation, and outside air economizers can significantly reduce cooling energy consumption. DC power supplies can improve energy efficiency and uptime. Distributed uninterruptible power supplies can provide reliable backup power.

Overhead Reduction:
The overhead of auxiliary power in data centers can be significantly reduced through various strategies. The Uptime Institute recommends an overhead of at least 0.6 kilowatts of auxiliary power per kilowatt of IT equipment. Actual overhead can vary, with some facilities achieving as low as 0.13 or even 0.08 to 0.11 kilowatts of overhead.

Data Center Energy Savings:
Systematic adoption of good engineering practices can lead to significant energy savings in data centers. Techniques include better chips, dynamic power management, efficient power supplies, and DC bus architecture.

Heat Transfer and Removal:
Thoughtful airflow design, efficient air handling, and cooling methods can reduce energy consumption. Heat-driven cooling based on on-site tri-generation can achieve high system efficiency and reliability.

Building Envelope and Lighting:
Optimizing the building envelope and lighting can save energy. Controlling humidity levels and diversifying loads can further improve efficiency.

System Architecture and Software:
Optimized system architecture, compilation, and operating systems can reduce unnecessary processor cycles. Efficient code and workload distribution can minimize energy usage.

Heat-Driven Cooling and Energy Export:
Radical efficiency in devices and systems, combined with heat-driven cooling, can make data centers net exporters of electricity.

Industrial Energy Efficiency:
Industry processes materials, and most waste can be turned into profit. Dematerialization, virtualization, and closing material loops can improve efficiency.

Technological Innovation:
Conventional technological innovation continues to drive energy efficiency gains. New processes like microfluidics can reduce plant size and energy consumption.

Design Revolutions:
Biomimicry and molecular assemblers offer potential for future energy efficiency improvements.

Conclusion:
Combining good engineering practices with responsible technology adoption can lead to significant energy savings in data centers and beyond.

Lovins’s Critique of Incrementalism and Inefficiency:
Amory Lovins emphasizes the urgent need to go beyond incrementalism and address the profound inefficiencies in energy systems. He stresses that we must recognize and confront the challenges we face to achieve meaningful progress.

Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency:
The Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency at Stanford, led by Jim Sweeney, aims to position Stanford as a global leader in energy efficiency, innovation, and commercialization. Lovins and Ralph Cavanaugh encourage collaboration and support to help the institute achieve its ambitious goals.

Question on LNG Efficiency Compared to Coal-Generated Electricity:
A question arises regarding the overall efficiency of LNG compared to coal-generated electricity, considering the inefficiencies identified in LNG terminals.

Lovins’s Perspective on LNG and Coal:
Lovins expresses skepticism about the efficiency comparison between LNG and coal-generated electricity. He asserts that both options are suboptimal and advocates for cost-effective energy-saving measures as a more viable solution.

Risk of Investing in LNG:
Lovins cautions against investments in LNG due to the significant potential for market disruption caused by untapped energy efficiency opportunities.

Market Share of Micropower and Megawatts:
Lovins highlights the growing market share of micropower and megawatts in the electrical services sector, attributed to their lower costs and reduced financial risks compared to traditional power generation sources like coal and nuclear.

Waste Disposal Subsidies and Proper Marginal Value:
There are subsidies for mass flows and mining, and often companies can dump waste where they shouldn’t. Waste disposal costs are starting to approach their proper marginal value, leading to actions like California doubling its water productivity in the 1980s to avoid wastewater disposal costs. There is still much to be done to address waste disposal subsidies and reduce material waste flows.

Demolishing Buildings and Material Recovery:
Demolishing buildings can achieve waste reductions of upwards of 90% at zero or negative marginal cost. Recovering and selling materials from demolition can offset the costs of careful demolition and avoid landfill tipping fees.

Curbside Recycling:
The effectiveness of curbside recycling depends on what happens after the materials are collected. Not making trash in the first place is always the best solution. Well-run curbside recycling programs should continue.

Stabilizing Greenhouse Gases at Zero Net Cost:
McKinsey’s conservative supply curve shows an approximately zero net cost abatement of half the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. This curve likely excludes many opportunities for cost-effective abatement, especially in the transportation sector.

Additional Points:
Amory Lovins will discuss transportation and its role in greenhouse gas emissions in the next presentation. The audience is invited to join the next presentation and thank Amory Lovins for his insights.