The Innovators…

Three of the many innovators who changed how we view our shared natural resources are S. David Freeman, Amory Lovins and Arthur Rosenfeld, pioneers of energy efficiency practices, and instrumental in contributing to the conservation movement.
Freeman headed up the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) under President Carter and pushed for technical fixes. He successfully curtailed TVA’s nuclear plant construction and instead promoted energy efficiency as the model solution. In his book, Energy: The New Era, Freeman pressed for “zero energy growth.” His work, among others, demonstrated that economic growth was not contingent on energy growth (Hirsh, p140). Freeman viewed the energy problem as long-term investment where the solutions come “from long debate and hard bargaining at all levels of American political life” (Freeman, p13).
Amory Lovins was received with more fanfare than his colleague Freeman, but they shared the same views. He achieved recognition for his leadership in promoting energy efficiency and was involved in formulating policy in the 1970’s. His article, “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?” was published in October 1976 and its as relevant today as it was then. What set Lovins apart was how he illustrated the United States energy policy in a two paths scenario. The first, he termed the “hard path,” which was rooted in the idea that energy growth is linked to GDP. The solution employed by this path was to sustain energy consumption, minimize oil imports and grow the coal, oil and gas, and nuclear facilities (Lovins, p66). This “business as usual” approach he argued, was prohibitively expensive and implementation would require greater environmental degradation. The “soft path” endorsed meeting the energy demands with a supply of renewable resources, mainly solar and wind energy. This second option stressed the same technical fixes that Freeman suggested, but Lovins took it a step further by spelling out the capital savings of conservation, making a compelling case for businesses who resisted conservation practices (ibid, p73). The barriers to entry were not technical or economic, they were mainly ideological; professional mindsets created rigidity to solutions that didn’t employ specific science and technology associated with the harder path (ibid, p74). Nuclear engineers for example, seemingly have nothing to gain by promoting photovoltaic or wind turbine technology, and the larger utility monopolies have a shareholder responsibility that rest on a centralized energy platform. Lovins also highlighted that conflicting and obsolete building codes were also an issue, something California’s Title 24 would address and San Francisco would surpass to become a leader of green building in California.
California Energy Commissioner Arthur Rosenfeld has dedicated his professional life to creating energy efficiency measures in buildings, homes and appliances. When the 1973 energy crisis hit, Rosenfeld and colleagues got together and launched the Energy Efficiency Building Program at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. By 1976, the California Residential Building Standards had adopted the “Two-Zone” computer system that modeled the energy performance of buildings. This was later accepted nationally as DOE-2, and is the basis for state and industrial building standards across the country (Hirsh, p149). Further, Rosenfeld and company created the first training program for energy audits by public utilities, they produced energy efficient technologies such as white roofs for buildings, insulated windows and the precursor to compact florescent lighting (ibid). Additionally, the Rosenfeld group investigated how energy consumption could be reduced in our home appliances, i.e. refrigerators, washing machines, etc. His work and preeminence in energy efficiency solutions has resulted in California’s leadership in conservation.