Installation of outdoor air conditioning on a tall building on the crane
Energy Efficiency
Factor Ten Engineering Design Principles
Designers often assume that radical efficiency is too expensive. Yet RMI’s Factor Ten Engineering initiative demonstrates that very large energy and resource savings can be very profitable across a wide range of applications. Factor Ten Engineering uses such innovations to transform design and engineering practice, via whole-system thinking and integrative…
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 this paper for buildings, industry, and vehicles show that optimizing whole systems for multiple benefits,…
Efficiency and Micropower for Reliable and Resilient Electricity Service: An Intriguing Case-Study from Cuba
Cuba’s decrepit electricity grid suffered 188 days of significant blackouts in 2004, 224 in 2005, 3 in 2006, and 0 in 2007. This dramatic improvement was due to a nationwide efficiency program, a crash program of switching to a majority of distributed generation, and reorganizing grid architecture around islandable netted…
Climate: Eight Convenient Truths
In this article from Roll Call, Amory Lovins provides eight arguments for Congress to pass climate change legislation. He argues that protecting the climate is profitable and describes steps that can be taken to promote energy efficiency and save fossil fuels.
Assessing the Electric Productivity Gap and the U.S. Efficiency Opportunity
It is commonly known that energy efficiency implementation has not achieved its technical or economically feasible potential in the United States, and many have attempted to quantify how much electricity the U.S. can save in the future. However, few have compared states to each other to determine why some states…
