Good interview with efficiency guru Amory Lovins in Buildings magazine:
BUILDINGS: Here we are, more than 25 years after you introduced the soft energy path. Where are we now, and are there many lessons still to be learned?
LOVINS: Total U.S. energy consumption is now within a couple of percent of the soft energy path graph that was so controversial 26 years ago. In that respect, were doing very well.
The biggest and fastest growing energy source in the country is more productive use of energy. In the past five years, our energy intensity has been falling by about 3 percent a year, and in the past 25 years, that reduced intensity that is, less energy per dollar of GDP has come to provide two-fifths of all the energy services we get. So its five times our domestic oil output or 13 times our oil imports from the Persian Gulf. That achievement deserves more respect than it gets.
