Amory Lovins

Given the level of energy ignorance in this country, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. But the inclusion of Amory Lovins in Time magazine’s list of the “100 Most Influential People of 2009” just sticks in my craw. Time’s blurb on Lovins declares that he “had the solution to the energy problem in 1976. It's taken the rest of us 33 years to catch up.”

What pure unadulterated bunk.

Lovins hasn’t “had the solution” since 1976 at all. And while it’s true that Lovins is influential on energy issues, it’s for all the wrong reasons. Lovins has become a darling of the media and the Green/Left because he has mastered the ability to deliver glib, reassuring soundbites about energy. And therein lies the problem. As Vaclav Smil, the polymath and distinguished professor of geography at the University of Manitoba who has written numerous books on energy has put it, “Inexplicably,” Lovins “retains his guru aura no matter how wrong he is.”

As much as any single person in the US, Lovins is responsible for propagating the false notion that overhauling our energy system will be cheap and easy. For instance, in 2007, he wrote a piece called “Saving the Climate for Fun and Profit”, in which he declared that curbing carbon dioxide emissions “will not cost you extra; it will save you money, because saving fuel costs less than buying fuel.” That’s a bold declaration, particularly when you consider the looming price tag for possible government-mandated cuts in carbon dioxide. No matter whose numbers you like, and no matter whether you prefer cap and trade or a carbon tax, those costs will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Those are costs that will be paid by consumers as the government attempts to wean America’s $14 trillion economy off of the hydrocarbons that provide the overwhelming majority of its energy needs.

In 2008, Lovins was at it again, claiming that the issues of “climate change, oil dependence, and the spread of nuclear weapons – go away if we just use energy in a way that saves money, and since that transition is not costly but profitable, it can actually be led by business.”

Lovins has become a media darling by being chatty, facile with misleading numbers, and of course, by promising one of America’s favorite meals: something for nothing.

All of that aside, why is the Time magazine piece so laudatory? Well, an obvious explanation is that the bio on Lovins was written by Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club. Now perhaps we can’t expect Pope to do much fact checking. He’s the head of an environmental organization that’s predisposed to spread Lovins’ deluded message. But it seems like the people at Time should be interested in facts. Here are a few:

1. Pope lauds the fact that back in 1976, Lovins wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs in which he said the US should follow a “soft” energy path. Within three decades, Lovins predicted that those “soft” energy technologies which he defined as “renewable energy flows that are always there…such as sun and wind and vegetation” would be providing about one-third of America’s total energy needs. The reality was quite different: By 2008, wind and solar were providing just 0.2% of America’s total primary energy. That’s somewhat less than the one-third that Lovins predicted.

2. Back in that same 1976 article, Lovins said there are “exciting developments in the conversion of agricultural, forestry and urban wastes to methanol and other liquid and gaseous fuels.” He went on, saying that those fuels “now offer practical, economically interesting technologies sufficient to run an efficient U.S. transport sector.” Today 33 years later, there is not a single factory in the US that is producing commercial quantities of the type of liquid fuels that Lovins cited. Why? Simple: cellulosic ethanol just doesn’t work – from an energy standpoint or an economic standpoint. And yet Lovins continues to repeat his fantasy about the viability of ethanol made from switchgrass or some other plant material.

3. Throughout his career, Lovins has been adamantly anti-nuclear. And yet since 1976, the only energy source that has reduced US reliance on hydrocarbons has been nuclear power, which now provides about 8% of US primary energy needs and about 20% of US electricity. Furthermore, new nuclear plants are being built all over the world, in Finland, France, Russia, China, and India, to name just a few.

And yet, Lovins, ever the nuclear opponent, no matter the reality of the situation, told me in 2007 that “Nuclear power continues to die of an incurable attack of market forces. A huge and capable propaganda campaign by the industry and its political allies is spinning an illusion of a renaissance that deceives credulous journalists but not hard-nosed investors.”

Once again, the facts are proving Lovins flat wrong. The best-performing US electric utilities are the ones that have large nuclear portfolios. Even more amazing is that hard-nosed investors are pushing hard to obtain more nuclear generation. For proof of that, look at the ongoing hostile takeover attempt that Exelon has launched for NRG, a power generator that owns 44% of the South Texas Project, a 2600-megawatt nuclear plant near Bay City.

4. In 1984, Lovins told Business Week that “we see electricity demand ratcheting downward over the medium and long term.” Since that time, electricity demand in the US has risen by about 66 percent. I guess it all depends on what Lovins considers “medium” and “long.”

The real howler in Pope’s homage to Lovins comes when he declares that his pal is “watching as his arguments become accepted wisdom and is even helping in the transition away from fossil fuels, as when he taught Wal-Mart how to make its trucks more efficient.”

Huh? Lovins is helping in the transition away from fossil fuels? Where is that happening? Please provide proof, Mr. Pope, if only just a little bit of it. Further, Lovins is “teaching Wal-Mart” -- a company that has turned logistics and inventory management into a strategic advantage en route to becoming the world’s biggest retailer -- how to run its truck fleet? Please.

The media’s love fest with Lovins continues apace because few reporters are willing to actually look at his record or ask him tough questions about his theories. Readers of Energy Tribune may recall that I wrote an extended piece on Lovins and his dismal record in November 2007. The article was accompanied by a long – nearly 2,200 words – Q&A with Lovins in which he declared that nuclear was a dead technology, the Jevons Paradox didn’t exist and that “The rebound effect exists but is empirically small.”

On November 14, 2007, a few days after my piece on Lovins appeared, the Green guru sent me an email saying “It's regrettable that you didn't avail yourself of my offers to fact-check, since the article suffers from many errors small and large. When time permits, I'll write a corrective letter. Would you then like to post it on your website? It will be on ours in any event.”

I assured Lovins that we would be happy to post his letter whenever he found time to write it. Eighteen months later, I am still waiting.