CONSERVATION
SC 208 Our Energy Future
April 21, 2006
John Bush
DEFINITIONS OF CONSERVATION
• Preservation (OED)
– From waste
– Of existing conditions
– Of the environment, especially natural resources
• Deliberate, planned or thoughtful preserving,
guarding, or protecting (Webster’s)
– The planned management of a natural resource to
prevent exploitation, destruction, or neglect
– The wise utilization of a natural product so as to
prevent waste and ensure future use of resources
that have been depleted
• What are we trying to conserve?
• What reasons are offered to conserve it?
WHAT?
• Petroleum conservation—PC
• Energy conservation—EC
• Resource conservation—RC
WHY?
WHAT ARE WE TRYING TO PRESERVE?
• To preserve the capitalist economic system (the global
economy as presently defined) by achieving economic
goals as they are being presently defined--CP
• To preserve the degree of freedom Americans have
(subject primarily to economic constraints) with regard to
the places they live and the lifestyles they adopt—SP
• To preserve for future generations the resources they
may need (waste is morally bad)—GP
• To preserve the biosphere by minimizing the impacts of
human action—EP
• To transform the capitalist economic system into one that
more fairly distributes the costs and benefits of human
activity --CT
NATURAL CAPITALISM
• Paul Hawken, Amory Lovens, Hunter
Lovens
• “To harness the talent of business to solve
the world’s deepest environmental and
social problems”
• “People could live twice as well but use
half as much material and energy” by
“combining innovations in business
practice and public policy”
NATURAL CAPITALISM
ASSUMPTIONS
• Natural capital (resources, living systems, and
ecosystem services) is the limiting factor in economic
development
• For a sustainable economy must deal with badly
designed business systems, population growth, and
wasteful consumption
• All forms of capital must be fully valued: human,
manufactured, financial, natural
• Sustainability depends on redressing global inequities of
income and material well-being
• Democratic systems of government based on the needs
of people rather than of business are required.
RESOURCE PRODUCTIVITY
• Doing more with less (differs from
economic efficiency)
– Only 6% of materials end up in products
– The economy operates at 10% of theoretical
energy-use efficiency
• Waste and noise are signs of inefficiency
• Many government programs encourage
inefficiency
OPPORTUNITY
• Americans waste or cause the waste of one million
pounds of materials/year
• US Energy consumption in 2003: 98,156 Trillion Btu
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Transportation 27%
Residential 22%
Commercial 18%
Industrial 33%
• US Energy intensity Btu/$ of goods and services
produced
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1970: 9130 Btu
2003: 4320 Btu
About ½ of reduction is due to efficiency improvements
Rest is due to service economy and offshore manufacturing
IS CONSERVATION A RATIONAL
GOAL?
• Jevon’s Paradox: as technological
improvements increase the efficiency with
which a resource is used the consumption
of that resource may increase rather than
decrease
• Huber and Mills: “the virtue of waste”
• In what parts of the US are the
opportunities greatest?
• What are the opportunities by sector?
SECTORS
• Agricultural/Food system
• Industrial
• Power generation/distribution
FOOD
• More than 15% of the energy used in the US
goes to provide, process, and distribute food
– Food processing, packaging and distribution 40%
– Refrigeration and cooking 40%
– Farming 20% (about ½ is for chemicals)
• US Farms use about ten times the energy from
fossil fuel that they return in food energy
• There are many small opportunities e.g. crop
drying, heat recovery, reuse farm wastes that
can aggregate if widely employed
INDUSTRIAL SECTOR
• Economics driven conservation always
operates—but not usually at the systems
level
• There are some commonalities but many
programs are industry specific
• All industries react to energy cost
• Materials processing industries: steel,
chemicals , glass use energy intensive raw
materials
DOE PROGRAMS EMPHASIS
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Specific industries
Combined heat and power systems
Motors
Steam systems
Compressed air systems
Continuous fiber composites
Combustion
Sensors and controls
ELECTRIC POWER
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Generation efficiency
Transmission
Storage
Distribution
Control
DOE PROGRAMS EMPHASES
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Superconductivity
Energy storage
Demand management systems
Distributed generation
Electric industry restructuring
Electricity reliability