Amory Lovins Quotes
If you ask me, it'd be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it.
Lovins, Amory B. "The Plowboy Interview: Amory Lovins." The Mother Earth News, no. 48, Nov.-Dec. 1977, p. 22.
At the time this article was written coal was being phased out in most of the country but not as the result of any political actions. The new technologies of producing shale oil and fracking had driven down the price of natural gas and oil, making coal the most expensive fuel alternative so the market place was finally doing what the politicians would not do. Ironically, the conservative politicians from coal producing states like West Virginia and Kentucky, who would normally say that government should always defer to the marketplace, then called for government action to protect the coal industry from the marketplace.
See {635006} for a slightly earlier French solar engine. Much of the most effective uses of Solar power uses the concentrated heat of the sun to heat water or some other substance like this device. The vast majority of the hot water heaters in Israel function on this principle—no electricity or any other fossil fuel. The only reason that the solar engines of the time were more costly where fuel was available is that no one realized the huge environmental consequence of the fossil fuels. Today we do realize that but do not charge the oil and gas companies and consumers to cover the costs of fixing what we know about and are able to remedy. Solar powered equipment is not a modern invention however and has been with us for well over a century. Paul Collins wrote “He calculated that solar power cost about ten times as much as coal, so that until coal began to run out, solar power would not be economically feasible. But this, to him, was not a sign of failure—there was no question that fossil fuels would indeed run out someday. The great engineer maintained an unshakeable belief in the future of solar power to his last breath; he had set up a large engine in his backyard and was still perfecting it when he collapsed in early 1889. Though his doctor made him rest, Ericsson could not sleep at night: he complained that he could not stop thinking about his work yet to be done.” The only reason that the solar engines of the time were more costly where fuel was available is that no one realized the huge environmental consequence of the fossil fuels. Today we do realize that, but do not charge the oil and gas companies and therefore consumers cover the costs of fixing what we know about and are able to remedy. Solar powered equipment is not a modern invention however and has been with us for well over a century.
Statement when Chile built the first large scale Solar Powered Electric Generating facility in one of its deserts. The cost of electricity was less than half of that of the then existing generation with carbon based fuels like oil or natural gas, It was a major breakthrough bacuase while solor power was always clean and infinte, it had been more expensive to generate than carbon based power sources. The consinuous improvement in the solar collecting techno;ogy, the large scale of the Chlean facility and the terrific desert location combined to not only make solor power less expsnsive, but much less expensive than fossil fuels.
Amory Bloch Lovins is an American writer, physicist, and Chairman/Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He has written on energy policy and related areas for four decades, and served on the National Petroleum Council, an oil industry lobbying group, from 2011–2018. In 1983, Lovins was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "pioneering soft energy paths for global security." He was named by TIME magazine one of the World's 100 most influential people in 2009.
