Today (November 13, 1947) is the birthday of physicist Amory Lovins, who explained that renewable solar and wind energy are better than nuclear energy.
Amory Bloch Lovins was born on
November 13, 1947, in Washington, DC. Lovins spent much of his youth in Silver
Spring, Maryland, Amherst, Massachusetts, and Montclair, New Jersey. In
1964, Lovins entered Harvard College. After two years there, he transferred in
1967 to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied physics and other subjects.
In 1969 he became a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford, where he
had a temporary Oxford Master of Arts status as a result of becoming a
university don. He did not graduate, because the University would not allow him
to pursue a doctorate in energy, as it was two years before the 1973 oil
embargo and energy was not yet considered an academic subject. Lovins resigned from his Fellowship and moved to London to pursue his energy work. He moved back to
the U.S. in 1981 and settled in western Colorado in 1982.
Each summer from about 1965 to
1981, Lovins guided mountaineering trips and photographed the White Mountains
of New Hampshire, contributing photographs to At Home in the Wild: New
England's the White Mountains. In 1971, he wrote about Wales' endangered Snowdonia
National Park in the book, Eryri, the Mountains of Longing, commissioned by
David Brower, president of Friends of the Earth. Lovins spent about a decade as
British Representative for Friends of the Earth. During the early seventies,
Lovins became interested in the area of resource policy, especially energy
policy. The 1973 energy crisis helped create an audience for his writing and an
essay originally penned as a U.N. paper grew into his first book concerned with
energy, World Energy Strategies (1973). His next book was Non-Nuclear Futures:
The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy (1975), co-authored with John H. Price.
Lovins published a 10,000-word essay "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?"
in Foreign Affairs, in October 1976. Its contents were the subject of many
seminars at government departments, universities, energy agencies, and nuclear
energy research centres, during 1975–1977. The article was expanded and
republished as Soft Energy Paths: Toward a Durable Peace in 1977.
Amory Lovins advocates "soft
energy paths" involving efficient energy use, diverse and renewable energy
sources, and special reliance on "soft energy technologies". Soft
energy technologies are those based on solar, wind, biofuels, geothermal, etc.
which are matched in scale and quality to their task. Residential solar energy
technologies are prime examples of soft energy technologies and rapid
deployment of simple, energy conserving, residential solar energy technologies
are fundamental to a soft energy strategy. Lovins has described the "hard
energy path" as involving inefficient energy use and centralized,
non-renewable energy sources such as fossil fuels. He believes soft path
impacts are more "gentle, pleasant and manageable" than hard path
impacts. These impacts range from the individual and household level to those
affecting the very fabric of society at the national and international levels.
Lovins wrote that nuclear power
plants are intermittent in that they will sometimes fail unexpectedly, often
for long periods. For example, in the United States, 132 nuclear plants
were built, and 21% were permanently and prematurely closed due to reliability
or cost problems, while another 27% have at least once completely failed for a
year or more. The remaining U.S. nuclear plants produce approximately 90% of
their full-time full-load potential, but even they must shut down (on average)
for about 1 out of each 18 months for scheduled refuelling and maintenance. To
cope with such intermittence by nuclear (and centralized fossil-fuelled) power
plants, utilities install a "reserve margin" of roughly 15% extra
capacity spinning ready for instant use. Lovins also argues that nuclear plants
have an additional disadvantage: for safety, they must instantly shut down in a
power failure, but due to the inherent nuclear physics of the systems, they
can't be restarted quickly. For example, during the Northeast Blackout of 2003,
nine operating U.S. nuclear units had to shut down temporarily. During the
first three days after restarting, their output was less than 3% of normal. After
twelve days of the restart, their average capacity loss had exceeded 50 percent.
Lovins provided his general
assessment of nuclear power in a 2011 Huffington Post Article, saying that
"Nuclear power is the only energy source where mishap or malice can kill
so many people so far away; the only one whose ingredients can help make and
hide nuclear bombs; the only climate solution that substitutes proliferation,
accident, and high-level radioactive waste dangers. Indeed, nuclear plants are
so slow and costly to build that they reduce and retard climate
protection". Concerning the 2011 Japanese nuclear accidents, Lovins
wrote: "An earthquake-and-tsunami zone crowded with 127 million people is
an unwise place for 54 reactors". In terms of the UK, Amory Lovins
commented in 2014 that: Britain's plan for a fleet of new nuclear power
stations is … unbelievable … It is economically daft. The guaranteed price (being offered to French state company EDF) is over seven times the
unsubsidised price of new wind in the US, four or five times the unsubsidised
price of new solar power in the US. Nuclear prices only go up. Renewable energy
prices come down. There is absolutely no business case for nuclear. The British
policy has nothing to do with economic or any other rational base for decision
making.
A negawatt is a unit in watts of
energy saved. It is basically the opposite of a watt. Amory Lovins has
advocated a "negawatt revolution", arguing that utility customers
don't want kilowatt-hours of electricity; they want energy services such as hot
showers, cold beer, lit rooms, and spinning shafts, which can come more cheaply
if electricity is used more efficiently. According to Lovins, energy efficiency
represents a profitable global market and American companies have at their
disposal the technical innovations to lead the way. Not only should they
"upgrade their plants and office buildings, but they should encourage the
formation of negawatt markets". Lovins sees negawatt markets as a win-win
solution to many environmental problems. Because it is "now generally
cheaper to save fuel than to burn it, global warming, acid rain, and urban smog
can be reduced not at a cost but at a profit".
Lovins explains that many
companies are already enjoying the financial and other rewards that come from
saving electricity. Yet progress in converting to electricity saving
technologies has been slowed by the indifference or outright opposition of some
utilities. A second obstacle to efficiency is that many electricity-using
devices are purchased by people who won't be paying their running costs and
thus have little incentive to consider efficiency. Lovins also believes that
many customers "don't know what the best efficiency buys are, where to get
them, or how to shop for them". He has been studying energy policy for 40
years. In 2009, Time magazine named him one of the most influential people in
the world. He has received various honorary doctorates and awards. Has
published 19 books. He has also provided advice on energy policy to 8
countries.
Source By: Wikipedia
Information: Ramesh, Assistant
Professor of Physics, Nehru Memorial College, Puthanampatti, Trichy.
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