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Read the Q & A from the Amory Lovins event.
Amory Lovins
Physicist; Physicist; CEO (Research), Rocky Mountain Institute, Snowmass, Colorado
Answers to Written Questions from the Floor:
Q. Why did deregulation of the telephone industry work and deregulation of public utilities fail?
A: We didn't deregulate electricity. We simply transferred jurisdiction from Sacramento or San Francisco to Washington, which then dropped the ball. Moreover, electricity is unlike any other commodity. It is absolutely crucial to modern life. If it falters for an instant, everybody notices. You could say its value approaches the value of gross domestic product because without it, not much gets produced. And you can't conveniently store it in bulk.
Q: Could green energy provide all of America's and or all of the world's energy needs and demands? What are the roadblocks?
A: Royal Dutch/Shell Group has concluded some years ago that it is very plausible and even likely that half the world's energy could be renewable in 50 years. It does take decades to make such big changes in such a massive ten trillion-dollar system, but it is happening inexorably as renewables become very competitive.
Q: What is your opinion about the safety of nuclear power plants?
A: You don't need to ask me, you can ask the insurance industry, which is our society's specialist on risk. They refuse to insure it. However, I would also add that whether nuclear power is safe is not relevant because the technology is unnecessary and uneconomic in the first place.
Q: Can you speak to the advantages and disadvantages of public municipal power versus investor-owned utilities?
A: I've worked for both publicly and privately owned utilities for several decades, and I've run into very good and very bad utilities in both categories. And I gradually concluded that actually what matters is not so much the form of ownership, as the vitality of the political or market process.
Q: How can the principles of Natural Capitalism be applied to the California power situation?
A: For those of you that haven't read Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, you can find the book and even download it if you like, for free at www.natcap.org. It's about a new way of doing business, as if nature and people were properly valued. And it starts with radically improved resource productivity. It's already been proven for example that you can build houses that don't need heating and cooling to keep you comfortable between -47°F and 115 °F. And it costs less to build them that way and they are more comfortable to live in.
Q: I want to put a solar system on my house to provide electric power: is this practical?
A: It is practical, it can be very worthwhile—particularly with the big rebates you can now get from the State of California.
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