On 18–19 December in Washington DC, Rocky Mountain Institute and Brookings brought together representatives of the top plans aimed at taking the U.S. off oil, as well as top energy and policy experts from around the world. RMI's convening power was on full display, and while the organizations represented were diverse — ranging from the Union of Concerned Scientists to the National Petroleum Council — there was a willingness to discuss and collaborate on potential solutions. According to Lionel Bony, Director of RMI's Office of the Chief Scientist, "What impressed me the most about the Summit was that organizations and people with very different backgrounds were willing to come together and try to find common ground. Oil dependence is a huge issue for the country, so it's critical to have collaboration between all the groups working towards getting the U.S. off oil." Collaboration was indeed key to the Summit, where participants agreed that a focus on transportation efficiency and diversification of our fuel supply are fundamental solutions to U.S. oil addiction. This narrowed focus allowed participants to prioritize important barriers that could be addressed with policy recommendations and have an impact by 2020. The variety of policies identified would require the government to establish a clear long-term vision, enable the infrastructure and vehicle transition to alternative fuels, and reduce America's vulnerability to oil prices. The next phase of RMI's Oil Solutions Initiative is a "Goals and Enablers" memo that is currently being drafted by the Summit participants. A release of the full Summit report accompanied by a press roundtable is also being planned for early March 2009. "We've addressed individual parts of the issue of oil dependence in the past, but now we have the opportunity to truly address the issue holistically, and to implement solutions that address security, economic growth, and environmental concerns as well," said Kristine Chan-Lizardo, Director of RMI's MOVE practice. Chan-Lizardo will continue to lead the combined RMI and Brookings project and serves as the point person for Summit participants. Information about participants and the plans they represent are available here. Please consider supporting this important work by clicking here. Sincerely, Rocky Mountain Institute

From World Changing:

RMI Introduces New Oil Imports Map

Sarah Kuck
January 9, 2009 4:07 PM

Breaking our dependence on fossil fuels isn't only a solution for halting our climate changing emissions, it's also about gaining energy independence and being cautious about when we reach peak oil.

The Rocky Mountain Institute has created a new oil map web tool that intricately illustrates this concept. RMI partnered with Google to create a visual representation of how much oil the U.S. has imported, from where, and how much we have spent during every month since 1973.

The team at RMI reminds us that if we take control of our energy future, we can change the way this map looks. About five years ago, RMI's Chief Scientist, Chairman and Co-founder Amory Lovins and a team of RMI collaborators wrote a roadmap for the United States to get completely off oil by 2050. The project resulted in a book called Winning the Oil Endgame. You can download it here.

Although disturbing in what it represents, the interactive map is quite entertaining and useful. (I found it interesting to look for connections between spikes, sources and U.S. foreign relations.) To know where we're going, it's important to know where we've been. Being able to visualize an issue, to see how much is where, and coming from who, is important and helpful when trying to imagine a future without those supplies or relationships. Weaning ourselves off a resource we are so evidently addicted to will be difficult, but it will be much easier and more exciting to plan for than the alternative option of panic and scarcity.

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.

Amory B. Lovins Michael Potts
Chairman and Chief Scientist Chief Executive Officer

The early bioneer Bill McLarney was stirring a vat of algae in his Costa Rica research center when a brassy North American lady strode in. What, she demanded, was he doing stirring a vat of green goo when what the world really needs is love? “There’s theoretical love,” Bill replied, “and then there’s applied love”—and kept on stirring. At Rocky Mountain Institute, we stir and strive in the spirit of applied hope. Our people work hard to make the world better, not from some airy theoretical hope, but in the practical and grounded conviction that starting with hope and acting out of hope can cultivate a different kind of world worth being hopeful about, reinforcing itself in a virtuous spiral. Applied hope is not about some vague, far-off future but is expressed and created moment by moment through our choices. Applied hope is not mere optimism. The optimist treats the future as fate, not choice, and thus fails to take responsibility for making the world we want. Applied hope is a deliberate choice of heart and head. The optimist, says RMI Trustee David Orr, has his feet up on the desk and a satisfied smirk knowing the deck is stacked. The person living in hope has her sleeves rolled up and is fighting hard to change or beat the odds. Optimism can easily mask cowardice. Hope requires fearlessness. Fear of specific and avoidable dangers has evolutionary value. Nobody has ancestors who weren’t mindful of saber-toothed tigers. But pervasive dread, currently in fashion and sometimes purposely promoted, is numbing and demotivating. When I give a talk, sometimes a questioner details the many bad things happening in the world and asks how dare I propose solutions: isn’t resistance futile? The only response I’ve found is to ask, as gently as I can, “Does feeling that way make you more effective?” To be sure, mood does matter. The last three decades of the twentieth century reportedly saw 46,000 new psychological papers on despair and grief, but only 400 on joy and happiness. If psychologists want to help people find joy and happiness, they’re looking in the wrong places. Empathy, humor, and reversing both inner and outer poverty are all vital. But the most solid foundation we know for feeling better about the future is to improve it—tangibly, durably, reproducibly, and scalably. At RMI we’re practitioners, not theorists. We do solutions, not problems. We do transformation, not incrementalism. In a world short of both hope and time, we seek to practice Raymond Williams’s truth that “To be truly radical is to make hope possible, not despair convincing.” Hope becomes possible, practical—even profitable—when advanced resource efficiency turns scarcity into abundance. The glass, then, is neither half empty nor half full; rather, it has a 100 percent design margin, expandable by efficiency. In our most recent Annual Report, available at rmi.org, my colleagues outline the latest steps in RMI’s long journey of applied hope. As signs of RMI’s effectiveness proliferate, our challenges are chiefly those of success—of needing ever more discriminating focus as the world moves our way, demanding that our limited resources be rapidly scaled to serve nearly infinite needs. We can’t do everything; doing just anything may miss the mark; doing nothing is unacceptable; but doing the right things at the right time can make all the difference. We are intently engaged in discerning and reaching those goals. In a world so finely balanced between fear and hope, with the outcome in suspense and a whiff of imminent shift in the air, we choose to add the small stubborn ounces of our weight on the side of applied hope. I was overwhelmed by the generous support for Rocky Mountain Institute this past year. RMI's annual fall appeal is approaching, and we certainly hope you'll consider partnering with us. If you'd like to give now and beat the holiday rush, it's not too early to make a tax-deductible gift. Please click here to make a secure, online donation to support this crucial work. Thank you. AMORY B. LOVINS Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) is an independent, entrepreneurial, nonprofit organization. We drive the efficient and restorative use of resources to make the world secure, just, prosperous, and life-sustaining. If you wish to modify your subscriptions or unsubscribe and don't have a username and password, please reply to this email to unsubscribe. Otherwise, please click the Email Preferences link below.