Breakthrough Technologies
Reality Check: Greener, Friendlier Alternatives Exist for Rare Minerals in Batteries
Accessible alternatives to “critical materials” can make excellent EV batteries, solar cells, and wind turbines.
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Breakthrough Technologies
The Aviation Efficiency Revolution
This 13 May 2019 invited keynote for the annual sustainability conference of the global aviation industry’s trade group ATAG seeks to increase the industry’s ambition, reduce its risks, and improve its competitiveness and profitability, without…
Breakthrough Technologies
Recalibrating Climate Prospects
A.B. Lovins, D. Ürge-Vorsatz, L. Mundaca, D.M. Kammen, & J.W. Glassman, “Recalibrating Climate Prospects,” Envir. Res. Lett. 14 120201, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab55ab. Reposted under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. A bracing antidote to the “doomism” lately fashionable…
Breakthrough Technologies
Metric and Method for Comparing Investments to Decarbonize the Electricity System
This simple, practical guide offers a transparent way to compare the climate-effectiveness of different ways to provide electrical services—specifically, different ways to displace coal-fired electricity. Its worked examples show manyfold to over 50-fold differences in…
Breakthrough Technologies
Does “Fuel On Hand” Make Coal and Nuclear Power Plants More Valuable?
On April 14, Energy Secretary Rick Perry sent a memo ordering a 60-day departmental study of whether federal policies favoring an unnamed competitor—evidently renewable electricity like solar and windpower—are constraining supposedly vital “baseload” plants (impliedly coal…
Breakthrough Technologies
Integrative Design: A Disruptive Source of Expanding Returns to Investments in Energy Efficiency
This paper summarizes the principle of integrative design. Integrative design rigorously applies orthodox engineering principles, but achieves radically more energy- and resource-efficient results by asking different questions that change the design logic. Examples described in…
Hydrogen
Comment on The American Physical Society Hydrogen Report
This article is a response to the 2004 report by the American Physical Society, “The Hydrogen Initiative.” In this piece, Amory Lovins argues that “The Hydrogen Initiative” makes erroneous conclusions about hydrogen economics and storage.
Hydrogen
Twenty Hydrogen Myths
This peer-reviewed white paper offers both lay and technical readers a documented primer on basic hydrogen facts, weighs competing opinions, and corrects twenty widespread misconceptions. Some of these include the following: a hydrogen industry would…
Hydrogen
Hydrogen: The Future of Energy
In this lecture given at the RMI Quest for Solutions event in 2003, Amory Lovins presents an argument for hydrogen as the next major supplier of energy. Hydrogen is versatile, clean, safe, and cheap. The…
Hydrogen
Hypercars, Hydrogen, and Distributed Utilities: Disruptive Technologies and Gas-Industry Strategy
In this presentation to the American Gas Association, Amory Lovins explains the relationship between Hypercars, hydrogen, and distributed utilities. The presentation describes the stagnation in the auto industry and transportation policy and shows that the…