Introduction:
Carly Sepola, Director of the Conference and Operations for ACES, expressed her gratitude to the attendees for their presence at the 50th Annual National Solar Conference. She acknowledged the achievements made throughout the week and introduced the final closing keynote speaker, Dale Miller.

Dale Miller’s Introduction:
Dale Miller, Senior Instructor at the University of Colorado Boulder in the Environmental Studies Department and Conference Chair, took the stage. He greeted the audience with enthusiasm and asked about their well-being, receiving a positive response. He expressed his gratitude for the conference and acknowledged its significance as his favorite event. He commended the attendees and expressed his excitement to introduce the final speaker, Amory Lovins.

Background:
Amory Lovins is an adjunct professor, author, and energy expert with extensive experience in energy efficiency, renewables, and sustainability. Lovins has received numerous awards and honors for his work, including the Blue Planet, Volvo, Zayed, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, and Mitchell prizes, as well as 12 honorary doctorates.

Energy Efficiency and Innovation:
Lovins emphasizes the importance of energy efficiency as a key solution to addressing energy challenges. He argues that all four energy-using sectors (transport, buildings, industry, and electricity) can save more energy faster together than separately. Lovins highlights the need for innovation across various disciplines, including technology, design, public policy, and business strategy, to drive disruptive changes in the energy sector.

Challenges to Established Industries:
Lovins discusses the disruption faced by traditional industries such as the automobile, electricity, and oil industries due to the rise of new technologies and changing market dynamics. He suggests that electric vehicles and distributed energy storage can challenge the dominance of the oil industry and transform the energy landscape.

Historical Context:
Lovins refers to historical examples to illustrate his points. He mentions General Eisenhower’s advice to expand the boundaries of problems to encompass more options and synergies. Lovins also cites his heretical suggestion in 1976 that primary energy productivity could increase by 257% in 50 years, which has since been partially realized.

Energy Savings and Cost-Effectiveness:
Lovins emphasizes the potential for significant energy savings through efficient energy use. He explains that optimizing buildings, vehicles, and factories as whole systems can lead to cost-effective energy savings, challenging the notion of diminishing returns. Lovins presents his own house as an example of a highly energy-efficient building that achieves substantial savings in heating, electricity, and water consumption.

Integrative Design and Retrofits:
Lovins advocates for integrative design, which involves considering multiple benefits and functions when designing buildings and systems. He describes the successful retrofit of the Empire State Building, which achieved significant energy savings through a combination of window remanufacturing, lighting upgrades, and HVAC improvements.

Conclusion:
Lovins emphasizes the need to embrace innovation and integrative design to address energy challenges. He highlights the potential for energy efficiency and renewables to transform the energy sector and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

Industrializing Mass Retrofits:
Europe is leading the way in industrializing mass retrofits of buildings to net zero energy, with significant cost savings and improvements in building life, amenity, health, and value. Innovative methods allow for single-day installation of energy-efficient upgrades, such as factory-customized insulation, heat pumps, and photovoltaic roofs. Similar techniques are being adapted to the United States through collaborations between RMI, DOE, and the California Energy Commission.

Achieving Ultra-Low Energy Buildings:
Studies have shown that buildings can achieve up to 90% energy savings without increasing the cost per unit of saved energy. Emerging technologies, such as passive radiative cooling and highly efficient heat pumps, are further reducing energy consumption. New cooking systems and lighting technologies are also contributing to significant energy reductions.

Empowering Off-Grid Families:
Efficiency gates can make electricity affordable for the poor, enabling access to essential services. Biomimetic fans and other ultra-efficient technologies reduce capital costs and improve the reliability of off-grid systems. DC solar microgrids with PVs, batteries, and appliances running on low voltage DC eliminate conversion losses and increase system efficiency.

Investing in Energy Savings:
Investing in energy-saving technologies requires significantly less capital compared to investing in electricity generation. This approach reduces the overall capital intensity of the electricity sector and frees up resources for other development needs.

Efficiency and Design as Key Factors in Global Development:
By purchasing megawatts at cheaper rates and rewarding providers for cutting customer bills, economies can free up capital for other development needs. Renewables can supply reduced global needs sooner, cheaper, and more easily with this approach.

Industrial Energy Savings through Design:
Armai’s industrial retrofit projects typically find 30-60% energy savings with payback periods of a few years. New build industrial projects can achieve 40-90% savings with lower capital costs.

Laminar Vortex Flow and Friction Reduction:
Nature’s design principle of laminar vortex flow, with low friction, can be applied to piping and duct design, saving 80-90% of friction and energy. This can save about half the world’s coal-fired electricity and a fifth of all electricity.

Compounding Savings and Smaller, More Efficient Drive Systems:
Savings in friction and flow in piping systems result in compounding savings in fuel costs, emissions, and capital costs. Drive systems can be made 80-90% smaller and twice as efficient through comprehensive system retrofits.

Building Efficiency and Material Innovations:
Tension structures, curved concrete forms, and 3D-printed concrete structures can significantly reduce material usage and weight in construction. New cement chemistries and steel made with green hydrogen can further reduce costs and emissions.

Electricity Demand in a Decarbonized Economy:
RMI’s study, Reinventing Fire, showed that U.S. electricity use could shrink 25% by 2050 with increased efficiency. Quadrupling electric efficiency would cost only a tenth of the current retail price of the electricity saved. Global projections often assume higher electricity demand, but this is uncertain and may not account for efficiency gains.

Grid Congestion and Electric Vehicle Efficiency:
Electric vehicle efficiency varies widely and can be improved by reducing weight and drag. Two-thirds of a car’s energy requirement is due to its weight, which can be reduced by advanced materials and integrative design. Ultralight electric cars would need far less electricity than standard forecasts assume.

Integrative Design and Cost Savings in Automotive Manufacturing:
BMW’s carbon fiber electric car saved weight and cost by eliminating conventional body and paint shops. Such integrative design can bring driver benefits, competitive pricing, and improved working conditions. Bloomberg NEF reports that Chinese automakers aim to reduce steel usage and add carbon fiber to their flagship cars by 2030. Hypercars entering the market this year promise even higher efficiency than the Tesla Model 3.

Dutch Firm’s Solar-Powered Car:
Lightyear’s five-seat car features five square meters of solar cells, enabling it to add 12 kilometers of range for every hour in the sun, bypassing the need for extensive charging infrastructure.

Heavy Vehicle Efficiency:
Walmart’s fleet of heavy trucks achieved significant fuel savings by implementing smarter logistics and adopting more efficient technologies. Newer heavy trucks can be designed to be at least three times more efficient than current models, offering profitable benefits. Airplane efficiency can be improved threefold to fivefold, as demonstrated by older designs from Boeing, NASA, and MIT.

Tesla’s Battery Electric Heavy Truck:
Tesla’s truck triples efficiency through aerodynamic design, light weighting, and a two-year payback period.

Air Taxi Efficiency:
A flight-tested air taxi boasts a range comparable to long-distance flights, with significantly lower operating costs and fuel consumption compared to business jets. A larger version could accommodate over 20 seats, potentially disrupting aviation business models.

Oil Reserves and Market Competition:
The amount of oil reserves that cannot be sold due to market competition now exceeds the amount that cannot be burned due to climate concerns, increasing the risk to oil owners from market forces rather than climate regulations.

Declining Cost of Electrification:
The cost of transitioning autos away from oil has fallen significantly, from $18 per barrel a decade ago to under $7 today, and is expected to drop below zero in the coming years.

Electricity’s Efficiency Revolution:
Technological advancements, such as LEDs, are driving significant improvements in energy efficiency, leading to reduced electricity consumption and cost savings. Efficiency gains challenge the traditional business model of utilities, which sell electricity as a commodity rather than a service.

Shifting from Molecules to Bits:
The energy transformation involves a transition from molecules and atoms (fossil fuels) to bits and packets (digital technology). Electricity is becoming decarbonized, decentralized, digital, and democratized. This shift empowers customers to take control of their energy consumption and production.

Disruptive Forces Reshaping the Electricity Industry:
Eight major disruptors are converging on the electricity industry, bringing rapid and transformative changes. These disruptors include renewable energy, LEDs, digitalization, distributed generation, energy storage, demand-side management, and peer-to-peer trading. Utilities face challenges in adapting to this rapidly evolving landscape.

Renewables Dominating New Capacity Additions:
Renewables accounted for 90% of the world’s net additions of generating capacity in 2020, and this trend is projected to continue. Renewables, including wind and photovoltaics, are becoming increasingly cost-competitive with fossil fuels and even non-renewable sources. Modern batteries, combined with renewables, are also becoming more affordable than traditional peakers.

Accelerated Phase-out of Coal Plants:
The Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming requires the closure of a significant portion of coal plants by 2040. New market prices for renewables make this phase-out economically viable, even without considering the benefits of climate change mitigation. Financial instruments can facilitate the closure and replacement of coal plants with modern renewables and battery storage at a cost-neutral or even profitable rate.

Demise of Gas Plants and the Rise of Carbon-free Portfolios:
Old and new combined cycle gas plants face challenges due to the cost-effectiveness of locally customized carbon-free clean energy portfolios. Demand-side renewable and storage assets can provide energy, capacity, ramping, flexibility, and ancillary services cheaper and more efficiently than gas plants. Significant stranded assets and investments are likely in the gas industry.

Scaling Up Renewables:
Modern renewables scale up differently than traditional thermal power plants, with factories producing solar cells that generate increasing amounts of electricity over time. Cumulative output for solar power is significantly higher than conventional power plants after just ten years of investment.

Variable but Predictable Renewables:
Variability in renewable energy sources like wind and solar power does not equate to unreliability. Forecasting accuracy for renewable energy output has improved significantly, allowing for reliable integration into the grid. Wind operators can now bid wind power into day-ahead hourly auctions with confidence in their ability to deliver.

Managing Intermittency through Diverse Portfolios:
Grids manage the intermittency of renewable energy sources by backing them up with a portfolio of other renewables, forecasted, integrated, and diversified by type and location. This approach mirrors the management of intermittency caused by plant failures in traditional grids.

100% Renewable Electricity with Dispatchable Renewables and Distributed Storage:
Texas can achieve a 100% renewable energy grid by combining wind, photovoltaics, and dispatchable renewables, with distributed storage such as high storage air conditioning and smart charging of electric vehicles. This approach eliminates the need for bulk storage and ensures reliable power supply.

Global Examples of High Renewable Energy Penetration:
Germany, Britain, Denmark, and Scotland have achieved significant renewable energy integration, meeting a large portion of their annual electricity needs from renewable sources. These countries have superior reliability compared to the US, demonstrating the feasibility of high renewable energy penetration.

Balancing the Grid with Demand Response and Diverse Storage Options:
Demand response, using electricity more timely, can significantly reduce grid load range and increase the value of renewable energy. Multiple carbon-free grid balancing options exist beyond bulk storage, such as demand response, energy efficiency, and smart charging of electric vehicles.

Electric Vehicles as a Distributed Storage Resource:
Electric vehicles with abundant cheap batteries can serve as a vast storage and ancillary services resource. Vehicle-to-grid integration enables electric vehicles to provide valuable services to the grid, such as frequency stabilization and demand response.

Efficiency, Renewables, and Smart Policies Drive Economic Growth and Carbon Reduction:
The Reinventing Fire book showed how the US could triple energy efficiency and quintuple renewables by 2050, saving $5 trillion and reducing fossil carbon emissions by 82-86%. This transition can be achieved without new inventions or acts of Congress, driven by smart city and state policies led by business for profit.

China’s Energy Revolution Roadmap:
China’s National Development and Reform Commission published a roadmap for its energy revolution, aiming to save $3 trillion, increase energy productivity, and reduce carbon emissions. This roadmap informed China’s 13th Five-Year Plan and has led to significant renewable energy installations and economic growth.

Achieving Climate Goals with Cost-Effective Solutions:
Extrapolating successful energy efficiency and renewable energy strategies to the rest of the world could achieve the Paris Agreement’s two-degree climate target at a lower cost. Reinvesting savings into natural systems carbon removal could further reduce emissions and achieve the one and a half-degree target.

Rapid Market Transformation and the Power of Capital Market Dynamics:
Energy transformations can occur rapidly, as seen with the transition from horses to cars in the early 1900s. Today, solar PV modules and batteries are becoming increasingly affordable, driving market shifts towards renewable energy.

The Pace of Transformation Set by Insurgents:
The pace of energy transformation is determined by insurgents who are not constrained by legacy assets or business models. Incumbents need to adapt to the changing energy landscape to remain relevant.

Peak Fossil Fuels and the Rise of Renewables:
Fossil fuel industries are experiencing capital flight due to the rise of renewable energy sources like electric cars and solar power. Coal, oil, and gas are facing declining market values and sales, leading to a permanent decline in fossil fuel usage. The year 2019 may have marked the peak of oil, fossil fuels, and CO2 emissions.

Renewable Energy Growth and Efficiency:
Renewables, primarily wind and solar, are rapidly expanding and capturing market share from fossil fuels. Investors are shifting capital towards energy efficiency and renewables, which reinforce each other. Efficiency measures have slowed the growth of energy use, further accelerating the decline of fossil fuels.

The Shift from Carbon to Silicon:
The global energy transformation is moving from the age of carbon to the age of silicon. Silicon-based technologies, such as microchips, telecoms, and software, are transforming energy systems. Silicon power electronics and solar cells enable more efficient and flexible use of electricity.

Conclusion:
The responsibility lies in enabling the new energy system rather than protecting the old. Efforts should focus on building back better and moving quickly to fix issues, leveraging the pace and cost advantages of design and software. The transformation should not be constrained by the inertia of incumbents but sped up by the ambition of insurgents.