ROCKY MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE: BEACON OF APPLIED HOPE
Greetings,
As a financial gale howls through the rigging and the political deck pitches beneath our feet, Rocky Mountain Institute perseveres straight toward our destination—a world that is secure, just, prosperous, and life-sustaining. We’ve always steered by that tall star, not by passing gusts. The spray is wet but the wild sea is exhilarating. With steady hands and unswerving purpose, our captain and crew are confident that this turbulence only underscores the reasons for the journey. The gale’s from astern, so let’s hoist the spinnaker—full speed ahead!
We ask for your continued support in provisioning our ship because the world has changed: our thought leadership and dogged application to real-life environments have built new opportunities that are now becoming accepted tenets of mainstream thinking and business behavior. A 6 September 2008 two-page Economist feature on RMI’s work noted that “today’s interrelated energy and climate difficulties have at last made the world see the importance of resource efficiency, energy innovation and holistic design—principles [we’ve] been advocating for nearly four decades.” So we must focus even more intently on choosing the most effective ways to take our work rapidly to scale.
That’s why, last month in Portland, Oregon, we used our convening power to assemble automakers and utilities, real-estate developers and retailers, telecoms and infrastructure firms, electronics and battery wizards, journalists and marketers and policymakers in an unprecedented three-day summit. Together we explored and refined new business models and technical insights for “Smart Garage”—ways for electrified cars, buildings, and the electricity grid to exchange energy and information and thus create new forms of value. This three-way integration, which we first suggested in 1991, has vast potential because cars will ultimately have over ten times as much electric output capacity as all utilities own.
Recharging a half-plug-in-hybrid car fleet at night would save carbon and wouldn’t need more power plants, but would justify bringing on line 230 billion watts of windpower that could more than replace all coal plants. That much windpower isn’t a fantasy—it’s already been proposed but is stuck in the queue waiting for transmission access. RMI also analyzed wind energy across the Great Plains and found that combining sites that are windy at different times could save over half the wind capacity needed for the same reliable supply. Alternatively, we found, two-thirds of all coal-fired electricity would no longer be needed if every state (adjusted for climate and economic mix) simply used electricity as productively as the most efficient ten states now do.
Last year, the U.S. added more windpower than the world added nuclear capacity—more windpower than the U.S. added coal-fired capacity in the past five years combined. Micropower and “negawatts” (saved watts) now provide over half of the world’s new electrical services. Thus RMI’s vision of a Next-Generation Utility—efficient, climate-safe, diverse, dispersed, renewable, and resilient—is starting to take tangible shape. Henry Ford said, “Whatever is worthy and right is never impossible,” and “Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.” We know we can. With your generous support we will.
And with that support we hope also to convene a similarly incisive end-to-end scrutiny of the solar-power value chain, comprehensively wringing out costs to make photovoltaics affordable for all. Already, says Tom Dinwoodie (founder of a market-leading solar firm and a new RMI Trustee), if you build side-by-side coal and solar plants of equal annual output in (say) New Jersey, starting now, then by the coal plant’s completion, the solar plant will be producing four times its peak output—and cheaper electricity. But we think solar economics can become far better still.
Oil is an even bigger part of the climate problem than electricity, and is at the core of America’s national security challenge. In 2004 we published, and now we’re implementing, Winning the Oil Endgame—a pioneering Pentagon-cosponsored roadmap for getting the U.S. completely off oil, led by business for profit, at an average cost of $15 per barrel. Our next off-oil leadership move is the “Oil Solutions Summit” we’ll convene this month with The Brookings Institution. It will bring together the authors of the many plans and proposals to relieve America’s oil dependence—industry and environmentalists, national-security hawks and climate protectors. Together we’ll map commonalities and gaps to synthesize shared approaches. This could help the new Administration rise above the cacophony and craft a coherent oil policy that commands wide consensus. And we’re exploring a car-efficiency leapfrog strategy as bold, and as revitalizing for Detroit, as its six-month shift in 1941–42 to making the materiel that turned the tide of World War II.
Rocky Mountain Institute has the right people and skills at the right time to make the difference the world needs. Our work on many interlinked fronts (summarized here) moves radical resource efficiency from ideation through barrier-busting to implementation. The later stages often get client funding from private-sector partners to leverage your philanthropic dollars. But philanthropy first lays the foundations by funding our innovations, incubating their growth, and enabling us to keep attracting extraordinary people.
We aim to weather this financial storm as we have others. Amidst revenue uncertainty we’ve taken prudent steps to stay agile. As our generous donors face similar turbulence too, we would respectfully suggest six thoughts:
* Today’s new political and economic landscape offers unique opportunities to accelerate RMI’s mission: the reasons you’ve previously supported our work just became far more compelling.
* If you must reduce your overall giving this year, you could sustain its impact by focusing on the organizations that create the biggest social return on your investment. (Transforming the economy from one running on fossil fuels to one largely based on clean energy offers new opportunities to build whole new industries providing millions of new jobs all across the country.)
* If you have the capacity to increase your support, that will help offset any shortfall from donors less fortunate, so we can maintain our headway.
* Congress just extended the law so donors at least 70.5 years old can give charities like RMI up to $100,000 per year tax-free directly from ordinary or Roth IRAs in 2008 and in 2009, by the simple method explained here.
* If you have some low-yielding assets like CDs and want to know they’re doing good work on issues you care about, you might consider a loan to RMI at a mutually attractive interest rate. This lets us capitalize our capital items so they don’t rob cashflow from our work. To discuss this opportunity, which many friends of RMI have used for two decades, please contact Doug Laub.
* Please consider a multi-year pledge of support to RMI, because a longer view of our course is immensely helpful in planning the most effective execution of our multi-year strategic initiatives.
Michael C. Muhammad said, “Everything works out right in the end. If things are not working right, it isn’t the end yet.” The haven we’re navigating toward is still distant, storms are looming, and the seas are perilous, but our vessel is strong, our crew brave, and our intent undimmed. Together we will arrive. Thank you for coming aboard.
As a financial gale howls through the rigging and the political deck pitches beneath our feet, Rocky Mountain Institute perseveres straight toward our destination—a world that is secure, just, prosperous, and life-sustaining. We’ve always steered by that tall star, not by passing gusts. The spray is wet but the wild sea is exhilarating. With steady hands and unswerving purpose, our captain and crew are confident that this turbulence only underscores the reasons for the journey. The gale’s from astern, so let’s hoist the spinnaker—full speed ahead!
We ask for your continued support in provisioning our ship because the world has changed: our thought leadership and dogged application to real-life environments have built new opportunities that are now becoming accepted tenets of mainstream thinking and business behavior. A 6 September 2008 two-page Economist feature on RMI’s work noted that “today’s interrelated energy and climate difficulties have at last made the world see the importance of resource efficiency, energy innovation and holistic design—principles [we’ve] been advocating for nearly four decades.” So we must focus even more intently on choosing the most effective ways to take our work rapidly to scale.
That’s why, last month in Portland, Oregon, we used our convening power to assemble automakers and utilities, real-estate developers and retailers, telecoms and infrastructure firms, electronics and battery wizards, journalists and marketers and policymakers in an unprecedented three-day summit. Together we explored and refined new business models and technical insights for “Smart Garage”—ways for electrified cars, buildings, and the electricity grid to exchange energy and information and thus create new forms of value. This three-way integration, which we first suggested in 1991, has vast potential because cars will ultimately have over ten times as much electric output capacity as all utilities own.
Recharging a half-plug-in-hybrid car fleet at night would save carbon and wouldn’t need more power plants, but would justify bringing on line 230 billion watts of windpower that could more than replace all coal plants. That much windpower isn’t a fantasy—it’s already been proposed but is stuck in the queue waiting for transmission access. RMI also analyzed wind energy across the Great Plains and found that combining sites that are windy at different times could save over half the wind capacity needed for the same reliable supply. Alternatively, we found, two-thirds of all coal-fired electricity would no longer be needed if every state (adjusted for climate and economic mix) simply used electricity as productively as the most efficient ten states now do.
Last year, the U.S. added more windpower than the world added nuclear capacity—more windpower than the U.S. added coal-fired capacity in the past five years combined. Micropower and “negawatts” (saved watts) now provide over half of the world’s new electrical services. Thus RMI’s vision of a Next-Generation Utility—efficient, climate-safe, diverse, dispersed, renewable, and resilient—is starting to take tangible shape. Henry Ford said, “Whatever is worthy and right is never impossible,” and “Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.” We know we can. With your generous support we will.
And with that support we hope also to convene a similarly incisive end-to-end scrutiny of the solar-power value chain, comprehensively wringing out costs to make photovoltaics affordable for all. Already, says Tom Dinwoodie (founder of a market-leading solar firm and a new RMI Trustee), if you build side-by-side coal and solar plants of equal annual output in (say) New Jersey, starting now, then by the coal plant’s completion, the solar plant will be producing four times its peak output—and cheaper electricity. But we think solar economics can become far better still.
Oil is an even bigger part of the climate problem than electricity, and is at the core of America’s national security challenge. In 2004 we published, and now we’re implementing, Winning the Oil Endgame—a pioneering Pentagon-cosponsored roadmap for getting the U.S. completely off oil, led by business for profit, at an average cost of $15 per barrel. Our next off-oil leadership move is the “Oil Solutions Summit” we’ll convene this month with The Brookings Institution. It will bring together the authors of the many plans and proposals to relieve America’s oil dependence—industry and environmentalists, national-security hawks and climate protectors. Together we’ll map commonalities and gaps to synthesize shared approaches. This could help the new Administration rise above the cacophony and craft a coherent oil policy that commands wide consensus. And we’re exploring a car-efficiency leapfrog strategy as bold, and as revitalizing for Detroit, as its six-month shift in 1941–42 to making the materiel that turned the tide of World War II.
Rocky Mountain Institute has the right people and skills at the right time to make the difference the world needs. Our work on many interlinked fronts (summarized here) moves radical resource efficiency from ideation through barrier-busting to implementation. The later stages often get client funding from private-sector partners to leverage your philanthropic dollars. But philanthropy first lays the foundations by funding our innovations, incubating their growth, and enabling us to keep attracting extraordinary people.
We aim to weather this financial storm as we have others. Amidst revenue uncertainty we’ve taken prudent steps to stay agile. As our generous donors face similar turbulence too, we would respectfully suggest six thoughts:
* Today’s new political and economic landscape offers unique opportunities to accelerate RMI’s mission: the reasons you’ve previously supported our work just became far more compelling.
* If you must reduce your overall giving this year, you could sustain its impact by focusing on the organizations that create the biggest social return on your investment. (Transforming the economy from one running on fossil fuels to one largely based on clean energy offers new opportunities to build whole new industries providing millions of new jobs all across the country.)
* If you have the capacity to increase your support, that will help offset any shortfall from donors less fortunate, so we can maintain our headway.
* Congress just extended the law so donors at least 70.5 years old can give charities like RMI up to $100,000 per year tax-free directly from ordinary or Roth IRAs in 2008 and in 2009, by the simple method explained here.
* If you have some low-yielding assets like CDs and want to know they’re doing good work on issues you care about, you might consider a loan to RMI at a mutually attractive interest rate. This lets us capitalize our capital items so they don’t rob cashflow from our work. To discuss this opportunity, which many friends of RMI have used for two decades, please contact Doug Laub.
* Please consider a multi-year pledge of support to RMI, because a longer view of our course is immensely helpful in planning the most effective execution of our multi-year strategic initiatives.
Michael C. Muhammad said, “Everything works out right in the end. If things are not working right, it isn’t the end yet.” The haven we’re navigating toward is still distant, storms are looming, and the seas are perilous, but our vessel is strong, our crew brave, and our intent undimmed. Together we will arrive. Thank you for coming aboard.
Amory B. Lovins Michael Potts
Chairman and Chief Scientist Chief Executive Officer
Chairman and Chief Scientist Chief Executive Officer
Etiquetas: Amory Lovins, Energy, Green Economy, Rocky Mountain Institute
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