ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Amory Lovins - Physicist, energy guru
In his new book, "Reinventing Fire," Amory Lovins shares ingenious ideas for the next era of energy.

Why you should listen

Amory Lovins was worried (and writing) about energy long before global warming was making the front -- or even back -- page of newspapers. Since studying at Harvard and Oxford in the 1960s, he's written dozens of books, and initiated ambitious projects -- cofounding the influential, environment-focused Rocky Mountain Institute; prototyping the ultra-efficient Hypercar -- to focus the world's attention on alternative approaches to energy and transportation.

His critical thinking has driven people around the globe -- from world leaders to the average Joe -- to think differently about energy and its role in some of our biggest problems: climate change, oil dependency, national security, economic health, and depletion of natural resources.

Lovins offers solutions as well. His new book and site, Reinventing Fire, offers actionable solutions for four energy-intensive sectors of the economy: transportation, buildings, industry and electricity. Lovins has always focused on solutions that conserve natural resources while also promoting economic growth; Texas Instruments and Wal-Mart are just two of the mega-corporations he has advised on improving energy efficiency.

More profile about the speaker
Amory Lovins | Speaker | TED.com
TED2005

Amory Lovins: Winning the oil endgame

Filmed:
1,014,474 views

In this energizing talk, Amory Lovins lays out his simple plan for weaning the US off oil and revitalizing the economy.
- Physicist, energy guru
In his new book, "Reinventing Fire," Amory Lovins shares ingenious ideas for the next era of energy. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:12
The old story about climate protection is that it's costly,
0
0
5000
00:17
or it would have been done already.
1
5000
2000
00:19
So government needs to make us do something painful to fix it.
2
7000
3000
00:22
The new story about climate protection
3
10000
2000
00:24
is that it's not costly, but profitable.
4
12000
2000
00:26
This was a simple sign error,
5
14000
2000
00:28
because it's cheaper to save fuel than to buy fuel,
6
16000
3000
00:31
as is well known to companies that do it all the time --
7
19000
4000
00:35
for example, Dupont, SD micro electronics.
8
23000
3000
00:38
Many other firms -- IBM -- are reducing their energy intensity
9
26000
5000
00:43
routinely six percent a year by fixing up their plants,
10
31000
2000
00:45
and they get their money back in two or three years.
11
33000
3000
00:48
That's called a profit.
12
36000
1000
00:49
Now, similarly, the old story about oil is that if we wanted to save very much of it,
13
37000
7000
00:56
it would be expensive, or we would have done it already,
14
44000
4000
01:00
because markets are essentially perfect.
15
48000
2000
01:02
If, of course, that were true, there would be no innovation,
16
50000
3000
01:05
and nobody could make any money.
17
53000
2000
01:07
But the new story about oil
18
55000
2000
01:09
is the government doesn't have to force us to do painful things to get off oil --
19
57000
4000
01:13
not just incrementally, but completely --
20
61000
2000
01:15
quite the contrary. The United States, for example,
21
63000
4000
01:19
can completely eliminate its use of oil
22
67000
3000
01:22
and rejuvenate the economy at the same time,
23
70000
3000
01:25
led by business for profit,
24
73000
2000
01:27
because it's so much cheaper to save and substitute for the oil
25
75000
3000
01:30
than to keep on buying it.
26
78000
2000
01:32
This process will also be catalyzed by the military
27
80000
3000
01:35
for its own reasons of combat effectiveness and preventing conflict,
28
83000
4000
01:39
particularly over oil.
29
87000
2000
01:41
This thesis is set out in a book called "Winning the Oil Endgame"
30
89000
5000
01:46
that four colleagues and I wrote
31
94000
2000
01:48
and have posted for free at Oilendgame.com --
32
96000
4000
01:52
about 170,000 downloads so far.
33
100000
3000
01:55
And it was co-sponsored by the Pentagon --
34
103000
2000
01:57
it's independent, it's peer-reviewed
35
105000
2000
01:59
and all of the backup calculations are transparently posted for your perusal.
36
107000
5000
02:04
Now, a bit of economic history, I think, may be helpful here.
37
112000
4000
02:09
Around 1850, one of the biggest U.S. industries was whaling.
38
117000
3000
02:12
And whale oil lit practically every building.
39
120000
3000
02:15
But in the nine years before Drake struck oil, in 1859,
40
123000
3000
02:18
at least five-sixths of that whale oil-illuminating market disappeared,
41
126000
4000
02:22
thanks to fatal competitors, chiefly oil and gas made from coal,
42
130000
6000
02:28
to which the whalers had not been paying attention.
43
136000
3000
02:31
So, very unexpectedly, they ran out of customers
44
139000
4000
02:35
before they ran out of whales.
45
143000
2000
02:37
The remnant whale populations were saved by technological innovators
46
145000
4000
02:41
and profit-maximizing capitalists.
47
149000
2000
02:43
(Laughter)
48
151000
2000
02:46
And it's funny -- it feels a bit like this now for oil.
49
154000
3000
02:49
We've been spending the last few decades
50
157000
2000
02:51
accumulating a very powerful backlog of technologies
51
159000
3000
02:54
for saving and substituting for oil,
52
162000
2000
02:56
and no one had bothered to add them up before.
53
164000
3000
02:59
So when we did, we found some very surprising things.
54
167000
3000
03:02
Now, there are two big reasons to be concerned about oil.
55
170000
4000
03:06
Both national competitiveness and national security are at risk.
56
174000
4000
03:10
On the competitiveness front,
57
178000
2000
03:12
we all know that Toyota has more market cap than the big three put together.
58
180000
5000
03:17
And serious competition from Europe, from Korea,
59
185000
3000
03:20
and next is China, which will soon be a major net exporter of cars.
60
188000
5000
03:25
How long do you think it will take before you can drive home your new
61
193000
3000
03:28
wally-badged Shanghai automotive super-efficient car?
62
196000
5000
03:34
Maybe a decade, according to my friends in Detroit.
63
202000
3000
03:37
China has an energy policy
64
205000
2000
03:39
based on radical energy efficiency and leap-frog technology.
65
207000
3000
03:42
They're not going to export your uncle's Buick.
66
210000
3000
03:45
And after that comes India.
67
213000
2000
03:47
The point here is, these cars are going to be made super efficient.
68
215000
4000
03:51
The question is, who will make them?
69
219000
2000
03:53
Will we in the United States continue to import efficient cars to replace foreign oil,
70
221000
5000
03:58
or will we make efficient cars and import neither the oil nor the cars?
71
226000
4000
04:02
That seems to make more sense.
72
230000
2000
04:04
The more we keep on using the oil, particularly the imported oil,
73
232000
6000
04:10
the more we face a very obvious array of problems.
74
238000
3000
04:13
Our analysis assumes that they all cost nothing,
75
241000
2000
04:15
but nothing is not the right number.
76
243000
2000
04:17
It could well be enough to double the oil price, for example.
77
245000
3000
04:21
And one of the worst of these
78
249000
2000
04:23
is what it does to our standing in the world
79
251000
3000
04:26
if other countries think that everything we do is about oil,
80
254000
4000
04:30
if we have to treat countries that have oil
81
258000
2000
04:32
differently than countries that don't have oil.
82
260000
3000
04:35
And our military get quite unhappy
83
263000
4000
04:39
with having to stand guard on pipelines in Far-off-istan
84
267000
3000
04:42
when what they actually signed up for
85
270000
2000
04:44
was to protect American citizens.
86
272000
2000
04:46
They don't like fighting over oil,
87
274000
2000
04:48
they don't like being in the sands
88
276000
2000
04:50
and they don't like where the oil money goes
89
278000
2000
04:52
and what sort of instability it creates.
90
280000
2000
04:54
Now, in order to avoid these problems,
91
282000
2000
04:56
whatever you think they're worth, it's actually not that complicated.
92
284000
3000
04:59
We can save half the oil by using it more efficiently,
93
287000
3000
05:02
at a cost of 12 dollars per saved barrel.
94
290000
4000
05:06
And then we can replace the other half
95
294000
3000
05:09
with a combination of advanced bio-fuels and safe natural gas.
96
297000
4000
05:13
And that costs on average under 18 dollars a barrel.
97
301000
2000
05:15
And compared with the official forecast,
98
303000
3000
05:18
that oil will cost 26 dollars a barrel in 2025,
99
306000
3000
05:21
which is half of what we've been paying lately,
100
309000
2000
05:23
that will save 70 billion dollars a year, starting quite soon.
101
311000
5000
05:28
Now, in order to do this we need to invest about 180 billion dollars:
102
316000
5000
05:33
half of it to retool the car, truck and plane industries;
103
321000
3000
05:36
half of it to build the advanced bio-fuel industry.
104
324000
2000
05:38
In the process, we will gain about a million good jobs, mainly rural.
105
326000
6000
05:44
And protect another million jobs now at risk, mainly in auto-making.
106
332000
4000
05:48
And we'll also get returns over 150 billion dollars a year.
107
336000
4000
05:52
So that's a very handsome return.
108
340000
2000
05:54
It's financeable in the private capital market.
109
342000
3000
05:57
But if you want it for the reasons I just mentioned,
110
345000
2000
05:59
to happen sooner and with higher confidence,
111
347000
4000
06:03
then -- and also to expand choice and manage risk --
112
351000
4000
06:07
then you might like some light-handed public policies
113
355000
3000
06:10
that support rather than distorting or opposing the business logic.
114
358000
5000
06:15
And these policies work fine without taxes, subsidies or mandates.
115
363000
5000
06:20
They make a little net money for the treasury.
116
368000
2000
06:22
They have a broad trans-ideological appeal,
117
370000
2000
06:24
and because we want them actually to happen,
118
372000
2000
06:26
we figured out ways to do them
119
374000
3000
06:29
that do not require much, if any, federal legislation,
120
377000
5000
06:35
and can, indeed, be done administratively or at a state level.
121
383000
4000
06:39
Just to illustrate what to do about the nub of the problem,
122
387000
4000
06:43
namely, light vehicles,
123
391000
2000
06:45
here are four ultra-light carbon-composite concept cars with low drag,
124
393000
5000
06:50
and all but the one at the upper left have hybrid drive.
125
398000
4000
06:54
You can sort of have it all with these things.
126
402000
2000
06:56
For example, this Opel two-seater
127
404000
3000
06:59
does 155 miles an hour at 94 miles a gallon.
128
407000
4000
07:03
This muscle car from Toyota: 408 horsepower in an ultra-light
129
411000
5000
07:08
that does zero to 60 in well under four seconds,
130
416000
2000
07:10
and still gets 32 miles a gallon. I'll say more later about this.
131
418000
5000
07:15
And in the upper left, a pioneering effort 14 years ago by GM --
132
423000
5000
07:20
84 miles a gallon without even using a hybrid, in a four-seater.
133
428000
3000
07:23
Well, saving that fuel, 69 percent of the fuel in light vehicles
134
431000
4000
07:27
costs about 57 cents per saved gallon.
135
435000
3000
07:30
But it's even a better deal for heavy trucks,
136
438000
2000
07:32
where you save a similar amount at 25 cents a gallon,
137
440000
4000
07:36
with better aerodynamics and tires and engines, and so on,
138
444000
3000
07:39
and taking out weight so you can put it into payload.
139
447000
3000
07:42
So you can double efficiency with a 60 percent internal rate of return.
140
450000
5000
07:47
Then you can go even further, almost tripling efficiency
141
455000
4000
07:51
with some operational improvements,
142
459000
2000
07:53
double the big haulers' margins.
143
461000
2000
07:55
And we intend to use those numbers to create demand pull, and flip the market.
144
463000
4000
07:59
In the airplane business, it's again a similar story
145
467000
5000
08:04
where the first 20 percent fuel saving is free,
146
472000
3000
08:07
as Boeing is now demonstrating in its new Dreamliner.
147
475000
3000
08:10
But then the next generation of planes saves about half.
148
478000
4000
08:14
Again, much cheaper than buying the fuel.
149
482000
3000
08:17
And if you go over the next 15 years or so to a blended-wing body,
150
485000
4000
08:21
kind of a flying wing with internal engines,
151
489000
4000
08:25
then you get about a factor three efficiency improvement
152
493000
4000
08:29
at comparable or lower cost.
153
497000
2000
08:31
Let me focus a minute on the light vehicles, the cars and light trucks,
154
499000
4000
08:35
because we all know the most about those;
155
503000
2000
08:37
probably everybody here drives one.
156
505000
3000
08:40
And yet we may not realize that in a standard sedan,
157
508000
3000
08:43
of all the fuel energy you feed into the car,
158
511000
3000
08:46
seven-eighths never gets to the wheels;
159
514000
2000
08:48
it's lost first in the engine, idling at zero miles a gallon,
160
516000
4000
08:52
the power train and accessories.
161
520000
3000
08:55
So then of the energy that does get to the wheels,
162
523000
3000
08:58
only an eighth of it, half of that, goes to heat the tires on the road,
163
526000
3000
09:01
or to heat the air the car pushes aside.
164
529000
2000
09:03
And only this little bit, only six percent
165
531000
2000
09:05
actually ends up accelerating the car
166
533000
3000
09:08
and then heating the brakes when you stop.
167
536000
2000
09:10
In fact, since 95 percent of the weight you're moving is the car not the driver,
168
538000
3000
09:13
less than one percent of the fuel energy ends up moving the driver.
169
541000
3000
09:16
This is not very gratifying
170
544000
2000
09:18
after more than a century of devoted engineering effort.
171
546000
3000
09:21
(Laughter)
172
549000
1000
09:22
(Applause)
173
550000
1000
09:23
Moreover, three-fourths of the fuel use is caused by the weight of the car.
174
551000
6000
09:29
And it's obvious from the diagram that every unit of energy you save at the wheels
175
557000
5000
09:34
is going to avoid wasting another seven units of energy
176
562000
3000
09:37
getting that energy to the wheels.
177
565000
2000
09:39
So there's huge leverage for making the car a lot lighter.
178
567000
4000
09:43
And the reason this has not been very seriously examined before
179
571000
3000
09:46
is there was a common assumption in the industry that --
180
574000
4000
09:50
well, then it might not be safe if you got whacked by a heavy car,
181
578000
3000
09:53
and it would cost a lot more to make,
182
581000
2000
09:55
because the only way we know how to make cars much lighter
183
583000
2000
09:57
was to use expensive light metals like aluminum and magnesium.
184
585000
4000
10:01
But these objections are now vanishing through advances in materials.
185
589000
4000
10:05
For example, we use a lot of carbon-fiber composites
186
593000
4000
10:09
in sporting goods.
187
597000
2000
10:11
And it turns out that these are quite remarkable for safety.
188
599000
5000
10:16
Here's a handmade McLaren SLR carbon car that got t-boned by a Golf.
189
604000
5000
10:21
The Golf was totaled.
190
609000
2000
10:23
The McLaren just popped off and scratched the side panel.
191
611000
3000
10:26
They'll pop it back on and fix the scratch later.
192
614000
3000
10:29
But if this McLaren were to run into a wall at 65 miles an hour,
193
617000
3000
10:32
the entire crash energy would be absorbed
194
620000
3000
10:35
by a couple of woven carbon-fiber composite cones,
195
623000
3000
10:38
weighing a total of 15 pounds, hidden in the front end.
196
626000
4000
10:42
Because these materials could actually absorb
197
630000
2000
10:44
six to 12 times as much energy per pound as steel,
198
632000
4000
10:48
and do so a lot more smoothly.
199
636000
2000
10:50
And this means we've just cracked the conundrum of safety and weight.
200
638000
5000
10:55
We could make cars bigger, which is protective, but make them light.
201
643000
7000
11:02
Whereas if we made them heavy, they'd be both hostile and inefficient.
202
650000
4000
11:06
And when you make them light in the right way,
203
654000
2000
11:08
that can be simpler and cheaper to make.
204
656000
5000
11:13
You can end up saving money, and lives, and oil, all at the same time.
205
661000
4000
11:18
I showed here two years ago
206
666000
2000
11:20
a little bit about a design of your basic, uncompromised,
207
668000
4000
11:24
quintupled-efficiency suburban-assault vehicle --
208
672000
5000
11:29
(Laughter)
209
677000
1000
11:30
-- and this is a complete virtual design
210
678000
5000
11:35
that is production-costed manufacturable.
211
683000
3000
11:38
And the process needed to make it
212
686000
2000
11:40
is actually coming toward the market quite nicely.
213
688000
3000
11:43
We figured out a kind of a digital inkjet printer
214
691000
3000
11:46
for this very stiff, strong, carbon-composite material,
215
694000
6000
11:52
and then ways to thermoform it,
216
700000
2000
11:54
because it's a combination of carbon and nylon,
217
702000
3000
11:57
into whatever complex shapes you want,
218
705000
3000
12:00
like the one just shown at the auto show by one of the tier-one suppliers.
219
708000
4000
12:04
And the manufacturing you can do this way gets radically simplified.
220
712000
4000
12:08
Because the auto body has only, say, 14 parts, instead of 100, 150.
221
716000
5000
12:13
Each one is formed by one fairly cheap die set,
222
721000
3000
12:16
instead of four expensive ones for stamping steel.
223
724000
3000
12:19
Each of the parts can be easily lifted with no hoist.
224
727000
5000
12:24
They snap together like a kid's toy.
225
732000
2000
12:26
So you got rid of the body shop.
226
734000
2000
12:28
And if you want, you can lay color in the mold, and get rid of the paint shop.
227
736000
3000
12:31
Those are the two hardest and costliest parts of making a car.
228
739000
3000
12:34
So you end up with at least two-fifths lower capital intensity
229
742000
3000
12:37
than the leanest plant in the industry, which GM has in Lansing.
230
745000
4000
12:42
The plant also gets smaller.
231
750000
2000
12:44
Now, when you go through a similar analysis for every way we use oil,
232
752000
4000
12:48
including buildings, industry, feedstocks and so on,
233
756000
3000
12:51
you find that of the 28 million barrels a day
234
759000
3000
12:54
the government says we will need in 2025,
235
762000
3000
12:57
well, about eight of that can be removed by efficiency by then,
236
765000
5000
13:02
with another seven still being saved as the vehicle stocks turn over,
237
770000
4000
13:06
at an average cost of only 12 bucks a barrel,
238
774000
3000
13:09
instead of 26 for buying the oil.
239
777000
2000
13:11
And then another six can be made robustly, competitively,
240
779000
5000
13:16
from cellulosic ethanol and a little bio-diesel,
241
784000
3000
13:19
without interfering at all with the water or land needs of crop production.
242
787000
4000
13:23
There is a huge amount of gas to be saved,
243
791000
3000
13:26
about half the projected gas at about an eighth of its price.
244
794000
4000
13:30
And here are some no-brainer substitutions of it, with lots left over.
245
798000
4000
13:34
So much, in fact, that after you've handled the domestic oil forecast
246
802000
7000
13:41
from areas already approved,
247
809000
2000
13:43
you have only this little bit left, and let's see how we can meet that,
248
811000
3000
13:46
because there's a pretty flexible menu of ways.
249
814000
3000
13:49
We could, of course, buy more efficiency.
250
817000
2000
13:51
Maybe you ought to buy efficiency at 26 bucks instead of 12.
251
819000
4000
13:55
Or wait to capture the second half of it.
252
823000
2000
13:57
Or we could, of course, just get this little bit
253
825000
2000
13:59
by continuing to import some Canadian and Mexican oil,
254
827000
3000
14:02
or the ethanol the Brazilians would love to sell us.
255
830000
3000
14:05
But they'll sell it to Japan and China instead,
256
833000
2000
14:07
because we have tariff barriers to protect our corn farmers, and they don't.
257
835000
4000
14:11
Or we could use the saved gas directly to cover all of this balance,
258
839000
5000
14:16
or if we used it as hydrogen, which is more profitable and efficient,
259
844000
3000
14:19
we'd get rid of the domestic oil too.
260
847000
2000
14:21
And that doesn't even count, for example,
261
849000
2000
14:23
that available land in the Dakotas can cost effectively
262
851000
3000
14:26
make enough wind power to run every highway vehicle in the country.
263
854000
3000
14:29
So we have lots of options.
264
857000
2000
14:31
And the choice of menu and timing is quite flexible.
265
859000
4000
14:35
Now, to make this happen quicker and with higher confidence,
266
863000
3000
14:38
there is a few ways government could help.
267
866000
2000
14:40
For example, fee-bates, a combination of a fee and a rebate
268
868000
5000
14:45
in any size class of vehicle you want,
269
873000
3000
14:48
can increase the price of inefficient vehicles
270
876000
5000
14:53
and correspondingly pay you a rebate for efficient vehicles.
271
881000
4000
14:57
You're not paid to change size class.
272
885000
2000
14:59
You are paid to pick efficiency within a size class,
273
887000
4000
15:03
in a way equivalent to looking at all fourteen years of life-cycle fuel savings
274
891000
5000
15:08
rather than just the first two or three.
275
896000
2000
15:10
This expands choice rapidly in the market,
276
898000
2000
15:12
and actually makes more money for automakers as well.
277
900000
3000
15:15
I'd like to deal with the lack of affordable personal mobility in this country
278
903000
5000
15:20
by making it very cheaply possible for low-income families
279
908000
4000
15:24
to get efficient, reliable, warranted new cars
280
912000
4000
15:28
that they could otherwise never get.
281
916000
2000
15:30
And for each car so financed, scrap almost one clunker,
282
918000
4000
15:34
preferably the dirtiest ones.
283
922000
2000
15:36
This creates a new million-car-a-year market for Detroit
284
924000
4000
15:40
from customers they weren't going to get otherwise,
285
928000
2000
15:42
because they weren't creditworthy and could never afford a new car.
286
930000
3000
15:45
And Detroit will make money on every unit.
287
933000
2000
15:47
It turns out that if, say, African-American and white households
288
935000
3000
15:50
had the same car ownership,
289
938000
2000
15:52
it would cut employment disparity about in half
290
940000
4000
15:56
by providing better access to job opportunities.
291
944000
2000
15:58
So this is a huge social win, too.
292
946000
2000
16:00
Governments buy hundreds of thousands of cars a year.
293
948000
3000
16:03
There are smart ways to buy them and to aggregate that purchasing power
294
951000
4000
16:07
to bring very efficient vehicles into the market faster.
295
955000
3000
16:10
And we could even do an X Prize-style golden carrot
296
958000
3000
16:13
that's worth stretching further for.
297
961000
2000
16:15
For example, a billion-dollar prize for the first U.S. automaker
298
963000
4000
16:19
to sell 200,000 really advanced vehicles, like some you saw earlier.
299
967000
5000
16:24
Then the legacy airlines can't afford to buy the efficient new planes
300
972000
5000
16:29
they desperately need to cut their fuel bills,
301
977000
3000
16:32
but if you felt philosophically you wanted to do anything about that,
302
980000
3000
16:35
there are ways to finance it.
303
983000
2000
16:37
And at the same time to scrap inefficient old planes,
304
985000
4000
16:41
so that if they were otherwise to come back in the air,
305
989000
3000
16:44
they would waste more oil,
306
992000
2000
16:46
and block the uptake of efficient, new planes.
307
994000
3000
16:49
Those part inefficient planes
308
997000
2000
16:51
are worth more to society dead than alive.
309
999000
2000
16:53
We ought to take them out back and shoot them,
310
1001000
2000
16:55
and put bounty hunters after them.
311
1003000
2000
16:57
Then there's an important military role.
312
1005000
3000
17:00
That in creating the move to high-volume,
313
1008000
4000
17:04
low-cost commercial production of these kinds of materials,
314
1012000
3000
17:07
or for that matter, ultra-light steels
315
1015000
2000
17:09
that are a good backup technology,
316
1017000
2000
17:12
the military can do the trick it did
317
1020000
3000
17:15
in turning DARPAnet into the Internet.
318
1023000
2000
17:17
Just turn it over to the private sector, and we have an Internet.
319
1025000
4000
17:21
The same for GPS.
320
1029000
2000
17:24
The same for the modern semi-conductor industry.
321
1032000
2000
17:26
That is, military science and technology that they need
322
1034000
4000
17:30
can create the advanced materials-industrial cluster
323
1038000
3000
17:33
that transforms its civilian economy and gets the country off oil,
324
1041000
3000
17:36
which would be a huge contribution to eliminating conflict over oil
325
1044000
3000
17:39
and advancing national and global security.
326
1047000
2000
17:41
Then we need to retool the car industry and do retraining,
327
1049000
5000
17:46
and shift the convergence of the energy and ag-value chains
328
1054000
4000
17:50
to shift faster from hydrocarbons to carbohydrates,
329
1058000
3000
17:53
and get out of our own way in other ways.
330
1061000
2000
17:55
And make the transition to more efficient vehicles go faster.
331
1063000
5000
18:00
But here's how the whole thing fits together.
332
1068000
2000
18:02
Instead of official forecasts of oil use
333
1070000
3000
18:05
and oil imports going forever up,
334
1073000
2000
18:07
they can turn down with the 12 dollars a barrel efficiency,
335
1075000
4000
18:11
down steeply by adding the supply-side substitutions at 18 bucks,
336
1079000
4000
18:15
all implemented at slower rates than we've done before when we paid attention.
337
1083000
4000
18:19
And if we start adding tranches of hydrogen in there,
338
1087000
3000
18:22
we are rapidly off imports and completely off oil in the 2040s.
339
1090000
4000
18:26
And the one thing I'd like to point out here is that we've done this before.
340
1094000
4000
18:30
In this eight-year period, 1977 to 85, when we last paid attention,
341
1098000
5000
18:35
the economy grew 27 percent, oil use fell 17 percent,
342
1103000
5000
18:40
oil imports fell 50 percent, oil imports from the Persian Gulf fell 87 percent.
343
1108000
5000
18:45
They would have been gone if we'd kept that up one more year.
344
1113000
3000
18:48
Well, that was with very old technologies and delivery methods.
345
1116000
4000
18:52
We could rerun that play a lot better now.
346
1120000
3000
18:55
And yet what we proved then is the U.S. has more market power than OPEC.
347
1123000
3000
18:58
Ours is on the demand side.
348
1126000
2000
19:00
We are the Saudi Arabia of "nega-barrels." (Laughter)
349
1128000
2000
19:02
We can use less oil faster than they can conveniently sell less oil.
350
1130000
4000
19:07
(Applause)
351
1135000
4000
19:14
Whatever your reason for wanting to do this,
352
1142000
3000
19:17
whether you're concerned about national security or price volatility --
353
1145000
3000
19:20
(Laughter)
354
1148000
1000
19:21
-- or jobs, or the planet, or your grand-kids,
355
1149000
3000
19:24
it seems to me that this is an oil endgame
356
1152000
3000
19:27
that we should all be playing to win.
357
1155000
2000
19:29
Please download your copy, and thank you very much.
358
1157000
3000
19:32
(Applause)
359
1160000
1000

▲Back to top

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Amory Lovins - Physicist, energy guru
In his new book, "Reinventing Fire," Amory Lovins shares ingenious ideas for the next era of energy.

Why you should listen

Amory Lovins was worried (and writing) about energy long before global warming was making the front -- or even back -- page of newspapers. Since studying at Harvard and Oxford in the 1960s, he's written dozens of books, and initiated ambitious projects -- cofounding the influential, environment-focused Rocky Mountain Institute; prototyping the ultra-efficient Hypercar -- to focus the world's attention on alternative approaches to energy and transportation.

His critical thinking has driven people around the globe -- from world leaders to the average Joe -- to think differently about energy and its role in some of our biggest problems: climate change, oil dependency, national security, economic health, and depletion of natural resources.

Lovins offers solutions as well. His new book and site, Reinventing Fire, offers actionable solutions for four energy-intensive sectors of the economy: transportation, buildings, industry and electricity. Lovins has always focused on solutions that conserve natural resources while also promoting economic growth; Texas Instruments and Wal-Mart are just two of the mega-corporations he has advised on improving energy efficiency.

More profile about the speaker
Amory Lovins | Speaker | TED.com