How to translate text using browser tools
1 May 2010 Profitable Solutions to Climate, Oil, and Proliferation
Amory B. Lovins
Author Affiliations +
Abstract

Protecting the climate is not costly but profitable (even if avoided climate change is worth zero), mainly because saving fuel costs less than buying fuel. The two biggest opportunities, both sufficiently fast, are oil and electricity. The US, for example, can eliminate its oil use by the 2040s at an average cost of $15 per barrel (2000$), half by redoubled efficiency and half by alternative supplies, and can save three-fourths of its electricity more cheaply than operating a thermal power station. Integrative design permits this by making big energy savings cheaper than small ones, turning traditionally assumed diminishing returns into empirically observed expanding returns. Such efficiency choices accelerate climate-safe, inexhaustible, and resilient energy supply—notably the “micropower” now delivering about a sixth of the world's electricity and 90% of its new electricity. These cheap, fast, market-financeable, globally applicable options offer the most effective, yet most underestimated and overlooked, solutions for climate, proliferation, and poverty.

© Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2010 www.kva.se/en
Amory B. Lovins "Profitable Solutions to Climate, Oil, and Proliferation," AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment 39(3), 236-248, (1 May 2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-010-0031-6
Published: 1 May 2010
JOURNAL ARTICLE
13 PAGES

This article is only available to subscribers.
It is not available for individual sale.
+ SAVE TO MY LIBRARY

KEYWORDS
Climate
Efficiency
energy
Integrative design
oil
proliferation
Renewables
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS
Get copyright permission
Back to Top