Energy Security

E06-02, How Innovative Technologies, Business Strategies, and Policies Can Dramatically Enhance Energy Security and Prosperity (PDF-400k)

This invited Senate Energy Committee testimony by RMI's CEO Amory Lovins tersely outlines how a least-cost national energy strategy can strengthen the United States and make the world safer — and how current national energy policy has unwittingly become a major threat to security (07 March 2006).

E03-06, Towering Design Flaws, The Globe and Mail (PDF-90k)

Blackouts come from dim planning decisions — a brittle, centralized grid and inefficient pricing policies, says U.S. energy guru Amory Lovins. The usual suspects — politicians, regulators, deregulators, utilities, and environmentalists — were promptly rounded up when the Aug. 14 blackout lost 61 billion watts of capacity in nine seconds. Yet the real culprit was none of the above — just as in 1965, 1977, and other regional blackouts described in a 1981 report for the Pentagon, Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security. The real cause is the overcentralized power grid. By Amory Lovins. This article appeared in The Globe and Mail (www.globeandmail.com) (21 August 2003).

S02-05, Energy Security: It Takes More Than Drilling, The Christian Science Monitor (PDF-12k)

The savagery of Sept. 11 confirmed that both Mideast oil dependence and fragile infrastructure threaten national security. Replacing Mideast oil is vital, but not by substituting equally or more vulnerable domestic sources. Domestic energy systems aren't secure unless they're designed to make large-scale failures impossible and local failures benign. This article, by R. James Woolsey, Amory B. Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, appeared in The Christian Science Monitor (www.csmonitor.com) (March 2002).

S01-27, RMI's Quest for Solutions — Rethinking Energy Security (PDF-225k)

An introduction to least-cost energy security for a general audience, presented at the Aspen Center for Physics to RMI's Quest for Solutions quarterly meeting (16 December 2001).

S01-25, Critical Issues in Domestic Energy Vulnerability, Alliance to Save Energy Summit (PDF-515k)

On 25 October 2001, the Alliance to Save Energy (www.ase.org) held an outstanding high-level Energy Summit in Washington, D.C., keynoted by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and led off by Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman. Amory Lovins presented this concluding talk in the final panel, "New Dimensions in Energy Security," led by former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, Esq. (25 October 2001).

S01-06, Critical Issues in Domestic Energy Vulnerability, Aspen Clean Energy Roundtable (PDF-280k)

In the more dangerous world after 11 September 2001, the vulnerability of centralized energy systems — first analyzed in the Lovinses' 1981 Pentagon study Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security — reinforces the economic and environmental arguments for a more efficient, diverse, distributed, renewable energy system. These handout graphics are Amory Lovins's presentation to the Montreux Energy Conference/Aspen Clean Energy Roundtable (08 October 2001).

S84-23, Reducing Vulnerability: The Energy Jugular (PDF-98k)

RMI's 1981 Pentagon study Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is summarized for security professionals (1984).

S83-08, The Fragility of Domestic Energy, The Atlantic Monthly (PDF-312k)

This lay summary of Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security shows that our complex, interdependent systems for the production and delivery of energy are vulnerable to simple but devastating acts of sabotage. It also shows that a more efficient, diverse, dispersed, renewable energy system can make major failures impossible. This article appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (November 1983).

Rocky Mountain Institute's compendium of concise, documented facts about oil and security for 2000, a typical year is now available in three formats:

• U.S. Energy Security Facts, Illustrated Booklet (PDF-240k)
• U.S. Energy Security Facts, Introductory Factsheet (PDF-196k)
• U.S. Energy Security Facts, Text-Only (PDF-56k)

Fear of further terrorist attacks has led many people to ask that Rocky Mountain Institute re-release our 1982 book Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security, which has long been out of print. Unfortunately it is still very current. In the 20 years since we first prepared it as a Pentagon study, little has changed, and little of that change is for the better. Apparently those who read and understood it in the early 1980s are no longer making policy, and their institutional memory has been lost. A new generation of policymakers evidently believes that America's sole energy security problem is imported oil, and that any domestic supply that can replace it will improve energy security. (1982).

• Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security (PDF-1.4MB)
  
• Brittle Power — Appendices (PDF-480k)
  
• Brittle Power — Bibliography (PDF-384k)