Speaker 00 Introduction:
Importance of bringing together diverse people to support education and learning. Sustainability Day coming next week, focusing on energy justice. Acknowledgment of PNC Bank’s sponsorship.

Speaker 05 Invocation:
Prayer for blessings, gratitude, and guidance in learning and stewardship of the earth.

Speaker 03 Introduction of Mick Cooney:
Senior Vice President at PNC, committed to environmental sustainability.

Speaker 03 Introduction of Amory Lovins:
Co-founder and chief scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute. Extensive experience as an advisor, author, and recipient of prestigious awards. Former Oxford Don, US architect, and professor at various universities. Named one of the world’s most influential people by Time Magazine.

Amory Lovins’ Introduction:
Excited to share findings from a comprehensive synthesis of American energy solutions. The project involved 61 individuals and six quarters of work, with industry input. The paperback version of the work will be available soon.

New Fire and Energy Transition:
Amory Lovins presents a unique perspective on energy choices, highlighting the need for a new fire that ensures safety, security, health, and durability.

Fossil Fuels and Their Costs:
The world’s energy supply largely relies on burning fossil fuels, which have contributed to wealth, civilization, and improved lives. However, the extraction and use of fossil fuels have rising costs related to security, health, economy, and the environment, eroding their benefits.

Oil and Electricity:
Two significant energy sources, oil and electricity, each contribute to two-fifths of fossil carbon emissions. While their uses are distinct, both are concentrated in transportation, buildings, and factories.

Aging and Inefficient Energy System:
Today’s energy system is inefficient, aging, dirty, disconnected, and insecure, requiring refurbishment.

Vision for 2050:
By 2050, an efficient, connected, and distributed energy system is possible, featuring frugal vehicles, buildings, and factories powered by a secure and resilient electricity system.

Eliminating Addiction to Fossil Fuels:
The transition away from oil and coal is achievable by 2050, reducing natural gas use while increasing energy efficiency and transitioning to renewable energy sources.

Economic Benefits:
This transition could save the United States $5 trillion in net present value by 2050, assuming zero value for carbon emissions and other external costs. It would support a larger economy without relying on oil, coal, or nuclear energy.

Achieving the Transition:
The transition can be achieved without new inventions, federal taxes, subsidies, mandates, or laws, avoiding Washington gridlock. Policy changes can be made administratively or at the state level, as energy policy is often determined at the state level.

The Urgent Need for Change:
* The world is facing a pressing need to address its oil addiction, which costs the U.S. $2 billion per day in oil expenses and an additional $4 billion in hidden economic and military costs.
* Nearly half of the oil consumed in the U.S. is used to fuel automobiles, highlighting the need to prioritize the transition to oil-free vehicles.

The Power of Innovation:
* Expanding the boundaries of a tough problem can make it soluble by embracing more synergies, options, and degrees of freedom.
* Reinventing fire involves integrating all four energy-using sectors (transportation, buildings, industry, and electricity) and four kinds of innovation (technology, public policy, design, and strategy).
* Combining all four innovation types creates deeply disruptive business opportunities and leads to outcomes greater than the sum of the parts.

The Obesity Epidemic in Automobiles:
* The weight of vehicles is a significant factor in energy consumption, with two-thirds of the energy needed to move a car attributed to its weight.
* Reducing weight through materials like carbon fiber composites can lead to snowballing weight savings and potentially cheaper construction.
* Lighter and more slippery vehicles require less force to move, resulting in smaller and more efficient engines.

The Electrification of Transportation:
* Electrifying the traction of vehicles becomes affordable with lighter weight, as fewer costly batteries or fuel cells are needed.
* The sticker price of electric vehicles can fall to current levels, while driving costs per mile are lower from the beginning.
* Automakers can transition from incremental improvements in traditional technologies to the steeply falling costs of ultralight materials, structural manufacturing techniques, and electric propulsion.
* Exploiting multiple synergistic learning curves can provide a competitive advantage over competitors stuck on a single flat learning curve.

Feebates as a Catalyst for Change:
* Feebates, which provide rebates for efficient new vehicles and fees for inefficient ones, can accelerate the adoption of efficient and electric vehicles.
* The largest of five European feebate programs tripled the rate of improvement in auto efficiency in the first two years.

The Game-Changing Potential of Electric Vehicles:
* The shift to electric vehicles will be as transformative as the transition from mechanical typewriters to computers driven by Moore’s Law.
* Computers and information technology have become America’s biggest industry, while typewriter makers have disappeared.

Vehicle Fitness and a New Competitive Strategy:
* Reducing the obesity of vehicles opens up a new automotive competitive strategy that doubles the previously expected oil savings in 40 years.
* Electrification becomes affordable, enabling the elimination of the remaining oil consumption.
* America, Japan, or China could lead this next automotive revolution, with cultural barriers being the primary obstacles.

Materials Revolution in Automaking:
Amory Lovins highlights the potential of advanced materials, particularly carbon fiber, in revolutionizing automaking. Carbon fiber’s strength and stiffness enable lightweight and durable vehicle structures. German automakers, like Volkswagen and BMW, are leading the way in adopting carbon fiber for automotive production. Carbon fiber can reduce capital investment in automaking, save lives due to improved crash energy absorption, and significantly reduce oil consumption.

Achieving Ultralighting:
Lovins presents a 67-mile-per-gallon SUV design that utilizes advanced materials and innovative manufacturing techniques. The vehicle employs a lightweight airframe-like structure, reducing the number of body parts and tooling costs. The design eliminates the need for a robotic body shop and paint shop, further reducing production costs. The propulsion system is also reduced in size due to the vehicle’s lighter weight, resulting in improved acceleration.

Toyota’s Lightweight Concept Car:
Toyota’s 69% weight-saving concept car showcases the potential of advanced materials and design. The vehicle boasts half the fuel consumption and one-third the weight of the Prius. Toray, a leading carbon fiber producer, announced plans for mass production of carbon fiber car parts for Toyota. Other automakers have joined the consortium, indicating growing interest in lightweight materials.

Efficiency Improvements in Heavy Vehicles:
Walmart’s trucks have reduced fuel consumption by 44% through logistical and design enhancements. Technological advancements in Class 8 trucks can save about two-thirds of their fuel consumption. Combining these improvements with more efficient airplanes can yield substantial fuel savings.

Leveraging Military Innovations:
The military’s efficient use of energy presents opportunities for civilian applications. Military R&D has contributed to technologies like the internet, GPS, and microchips. Transferring military efficiency technologies to the civilian sector can accelerate energy savings and reduce reliance on oil.

Smart Traffic Management:
Lovins emphasizes the need for smarter traffic management to reduce congestion and waste. IT-enabled smart grids and demand response strategies can be applied to road traffic. By eliminating needless driving, billions of dollars can be saved annually.

Lovins’ Four Points:
Charge drivers by the mile rather than by the gallon. Promote smart growth and new urbanist development patterns. Use smart IT to enable transit, car sharing, and ride sharing. Use smart IT to make traffic flow more freely.

Potential Savings:
The four methods above can reduce driving by 46-84%, saving $0.4 trillion. Better truck logistics can save another $0.3 trillion. Displacing each barrel of oil at a cost of $25 instead of buying it at $100 saves $4 trillion net present value. Including hidden economic and military costs of oil dependence, the saving could be $12 trillion.

Achieving Mobility without Oil:
Start with the savings baked into government forecasts. Add additional savings from vehicle fitness and more productive use of vehicles. Develop cars that can run on any combination of hydrogen fuel cells, electricity, and advanced biofuels. Heavy trucks and airplanes can use hydrogen, advanced biofuels, or natural gas.

Biofuels:
At most, we would need three million barrels of biofuels per day. Two-thirds of this could be made from waste without displacing cropland or harming soil or climate. Farmers and ranchers would be paid to take carbon out of the air and put it back in the soil.

Institutional Acupuncture:
Rocky Mountain Institute speeds up oil savings by inserting “little needles” at partner organizations to get entrepreneurial energy flowing. The transition to an oil-free economy is already well underway.

Electrified Autos and Smart Grids:
Electrified vehicles can help reduce oil demand and promote a transition away from fossil fuels. Smart autos, smart buildings, and smart grids can work together to improve grid flexibility and facilitate the integration of renewable energy sources like solar and wind. Electrified autos have the potential to revolutionize the energy sector by converging the oil and electricity industries and fostering new solutions to energy challenges.

Revolutionizing Electricity Generation and Consumption:
The electricity sector is ripe for disruptions due to the collision of 21st-century technology with outdated institutions, regulations, and cultural norms. Improving energy efficiency can reduce the demand for electricity and create a “reservoir of megawatts” that can be tapped into as needed. The unbought savings from energy efficiency technologies continue to grow and become more affordable over time.

Declining Electricity Demand and Increased Efficiency:
America’s electricity use could potentially shrink by 1% per year if buildings and industries adopt energy-efficient measures at a faster pace. In 2018, electricity consumption in the United States fell by an unprecedented 3.4% per dollar of GDP, indicating a trend towards reduced electricity demand. Continuing to invest in energy efficiency and adopting innovative technologies can lead to further reductions in electricity consumption.

Efficiency and Savings:
Energy productivity can be tripled or quadrupled in U.S. buildings, saving $1.4 trillion over 40 years with a 33% internal rate of return. Industry can double its energy productivity with a 21% internal rate of return. Integrative design can optimize entire systems to achieve larger energy savings at lower costs.

Example: Empire State Building Retrofit:
Replacing windows, lighting, and office equipment reduced the cooling load by a third. Renovating smaller chillers instead of adding bigger ones saved over $17 million in capital costs and reduced the payback time to three years.

Example: Lovins’ Home in the Rockies:
The home has no heating system and saves 99% of space and water heating energy and 90% of household electricity. Integrative design resulted in multiple benefits from a single expenditure.

Industrial Energy Savings:
Three-fifths of the world’s electricity runs motors, half of which runs pumps and fans. Integrative design can save half the energy in industrial motor systems with a one-year payback. Replacing long, skinny, and crooked pipes with fat, short, straight pipes can reduce pumping energy by 84%.

Efficiency in Electricity Generation:
Only a tenth of the energy in coal actually comes out of a power plant as electricity due to compounding losses.

Compounding Savings:
Turning compounding losses into compounding savings by reducing flow or friction in the energy system. Every unit of energy saved compounds back, resulting in significant savings.

Industrial Redesigns:
Lovins’ team has found snowballing energy savings in industrial redesigns worth over $40 billion. Retrofit designs save 30-60% of energy with short payback periods. New facilities can save 40-90% of energy while reducing capital costs.

Shift to Renewables:
Reduced electricity demand from energy efficiency eases the transition to renewable energy sources. China leads the explosive growth and plummeting costs of solar and wind power. Solar and wind power are already cost-competitive with fossil fuels in favorable locations.

Unsubsidized Solar Power:
In good solar climates, unsubsidized solar power can cost as low as $0.06 per kilowatt-hour. Solar power combined with other unregulated products can create a virtual utility that bypasses traditional utilities.

Incumbent Electricity Providers:
Utility executives face challenges from the rise of solar and other decentralized energy sources. Incumbent electricity providers can turn the insurgency into a business opportunity.

Global Renewable Energy Growth:
Half of the new generating capacity added worldwide since 2008 has been renewable. Wind and solar power are the dominant renewable energy sources.

The Rapid Growth of Renewable Energy:
The global capacity for renewable energy generation is increasing at an unprecedented rate, with the sector becoming a scalable and mass-producible industry. Solar photovoltaic plants can now be built within a year and produce significant amounts of electricity, making them a more attractive option than traditional power plants. The capacity to produce solar modules now exceeds the global installation capacity, indicating the potential for even faster growth in the future.

The Economic Advantage of Renewables:
Renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, are becoming more affordable, with falling capital costs and competitive operating costs compared to fossil fuels. In the United States, modern renewables and energy efficiency have reduced coal’s market share by 28%, posing a significant threat to existing coal and nuclear plants.

The Reliability of Renewables:
The variability of solar and wind power is manageable through the use of grid backup systems and distributed storage, such as ice storage and smart charging of electric vehicles. Examples of regions with high penetration of renewable energy, such as Germany and Denmark, demonstrate that reliable power can be achieved through a combination of renewables and storage technologies.

The Global Transition to Renewable Energy:
Many countries and utilities worldwide are actively transitioning to renewable energy sources, with examples such as Portugal’s 70% renewable electricity and Texas’s 30% renewable energy days. The vision of an all-renewable European grid is gaining momentum, with countries like Denmark and Germany leading the way in reliable renewable energy integration.

The Shift Towards Distributed Generation:
Renewable energy technologies are enabling a shift towards distributed generation, with smaller-scale power plants and increased local energy production. This distributed approach enhances grid resilience and reduces the reliance on centralized power plants.

Renewable Energy in Denmark:
Denmark has shifted to a decentralized renewable energy system over 32 years, comprised of individual and community-owned wind farms, biomass, and biogas facilities. They plan to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2050, including all forms of energy, at no extra cost. The government is also transitioning to a cellular power grid design, eliminating the risk of cascading blackouts.

Aging and Insecure Power System in the United States:
The current power system in the US is aging, dirty, and insecure. It needs to be replaced by 2050, and several options are available, including centralized and distributed renewables, new nuclear, and clean coal. All these options have similar costs, but they vary in risks related to national security, fuel, water, finance, technology, climate, and health.

Risks Associated with Over-Centralized Grid:
The over-centralized grid in the US is vulnerable to cascading blackouts due to operational problems, natural disasters, physical attacks, and cyber attacks. These blackouts can have severe economic consequences.

Benefits of Distributed Renewable Energy Systems:
Distributed renewables, when combined in microgrids, can reduce the risk of blackouts and improve national, community, and individual security. Microgrids can disconnect and reconnect seamlessly, ensuring continuous power supply. This approach is adopted by the Pentagon for its power supply needs.

Economic and Societal Advantages of Distributed Renewable Energy Systems:
Distributed renewable energy systems can provide better customer choice, entrepreneurial opportunities, and innovation. Adopting this resilient grid design can enhance national security, community and individual security, and provide better customer choice and innovation at a cost comparable to traditional energy systems.

The Changing Electricity System:
Traditional utilities focused on building large power plants and rewarding electricity sales, leading to a system heavily reliant on fossil fuels. A shift is occurring towards efficiency, renewables, cogeneration, smart grid, distributed storage, and demand response, driven by regulatory changes that reward utilities for cutting bills. States that allow demand-side resources to bid against supply-side resources achieve the most cost-effective energy mix.

Energy Future as a Choice:
The energy future is not predetermined but a result of conscious choices. The energy needed to generate one dollar of GDP has significantly decreased, challenging previous assumptions about energy consumption. Technological advancements, improved design, and mature marketing channels provide a clear path to tripling energy efficiency at a lower cost.

Enlarging and Integrating the Energy Problem:
To solve the energy problem, it was necessary to expand the scope and consider the interconnectedness of various energy sources. The results of this approach have been surprising and transformative, demonstrating the potential for major energy shifts.

The Big Story: Reinventing Fire:
Combining the electricity and oil revolutions, we can achieve a profound transformation in energy systems, comparable to the discovery of fire. This transformation involves a fundamental shift away from fossil fuels and towards a more sustainable and efficient energy landscape.

Summary of Amory Lovins’ Presentation:
A transformative shift away from oil and coal by 2050, driven by smart policies and mindful markets, can bring about substantial economic growth, enhanced security, and a significant reduction in carbon emissions. By focusing on common goals and outcomes, rather than motives or reasons, we can find unifying solutions to energy challenges. The best solutions to global problems, including energy security and prosperity, are also the most cost-effective and beneficial for businesses and communities. The transition to a clean energy future requires a shift from old thinking and outdated approaches to innovative and sustainable solutions. This transformation represents a major opportunity for businesses and individuals to capture a $5 trillion prize and create a healthier, richer, fairer, cooler, and safer world. Engaging in dialogue and collaboration is essential to driving the change needed to reinvent fire and transition to a clean energy future.

Questions and Answers:

Q: Have you explored alternative energy sources, such as free energy, energy from water, and frequencies to liberate hydrogen? A: While there are interesting phenomena, such as low-energy nuclear reactions, there is no evidence of practical and workable technologies based on these claims. Q: How do you address efforts to roll back renewable portfolio policies? A: The momentum towards clean energy is overwhelming, but there may be setbacks along the way. It is important to continue advocating for policies that support renewable energy and sustainable practices.

Government Policies and Business Leadership:
Amory Lovins emphasizes the importance of government policies that steer the market towards clean energy adoption, while allowing businesses to lead the transition. He advocates for fair competition among various energy sources, regardless of their type or ownership, to drive innovation and cost-effectiveness.

Renewable Portfolio Standards:
Lovins argues that renewable portfolio standards are not irrational mandates but can actually lower energy costs. He cites the example of Germany, where wholesale electricity prices have decreased significantly due to the growth of renewables. He explains the financial rationale for having a substantial fraction of renewables in an energy portfolio, even if they cost more, to improve the overall risk-reward ratio.

Critique of Energy Forecasts:
Lovins criticizes energy forecasts made by agencies like the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) for excluding innovation and new technologies. He highlights the importance of considering technological advancements and business model changes in energy forecasting. Lovins emphasizes the need for more comprehensive analysis that includes innovation, competition, and new business models.

Personal Rapid Transit and Public Transit Innovations:
Lovins discusses the potential of personal rapid transit systems, such as self-guided cars, but raises concerns about safety, software reliability, and practical challenges. He highlights innovative public transit systems like Cybertran and the Curitiba Brazil bus system as promising alternatives to car-dominated transportation. Lovins emphasizes the importance of bike lanes, pedestrian-friendly community designs, and land-use planning to reduce reliance on automobiles.