energy efficiency energy effectiveness

1. Add Village leaky pipe analogy
ADD POTATO COMPUTER EXAMPLE

2. A few things about the usefulness of
oil
• Add Potato computer
• Add truck oil image

3. Energy Flow in Human History
• Low energy societies – Hunter-gatherer – first
leisure society – great gains in energy
• Energy gains for hunter gathers:
– 30-40 for energy dense roots
– 10-20 for all gathering zero to net loss for small
mammals
– Net energy return for Alaska Inuit baleen whale:
2000

4. Global Growth of Population, Energy, GDP 1800-2000

5. Energy and the Economy
GDP way up
Energy & Pop up
Energy/cap flat
Energy/GDP way down

6. Negawatts

8. Growth of economy in constant dollars
since 1 ad
AD 1 $100 Billion
1820 $700 Billion
1970 $3,500 Billion
2000 36,000,000 Billion

9. The Need to Change
(aka the obligatory hockey stick graph)

10. PEAK OIL
GLOBAL
WARMING
ECONOMIC
INSTABILITY
THE LONG EMERGENCY

11. 11
How Much Oil is There Anyway…
 2 Trillion barrels
is the equivalent
to 1.4% of the
volume of the
great lakes.
 Less than the size of
Green Bay.

12. 12
How much is a gallon of ‘liquid carbon’ fuel really worth?
One Truck + 1 gal. of Diesel Fuel
 80,000 lb. truck
 5 miles (up a shallow grade)
By Hand
 1 person with 1 garden cart
= 250 lbs/load/trip
 1 person could manage 20 miles/day
or 4 loads/day (1,000 lbs.)
 Conclusion:
5 Minutes by truck
80 Days by foot & cart
Powerful Oil – ‘Black Gold’

13. 13

14. 14
2005
Worldwide,
there were
439 in
operation.
35 under
construction.
7-12 years to
build 1.

15. Big oil tanks up: Exxon's profit nears
$10B
By Matt Krantz, USA TODAY
While drivers have been painfully paying up at the pump, oil companies have been racking up eye popping profits.
Thursday, ExxonMobil (XOM) became the most stark example yet of how much big oil companies benefited from the huge run-
up in oil prices during the third quarter even as two major hurricanes ripped through the industry's Gulf Coast infrastructure.
Exxon reported:
• •Net income up 75% to $9.92 billion. That is the most a U.S. company has earned from operations in a three-month period and
greater than the annual gross domestic product of entire nations including Cameroon and Zimbabwe.
• •Revenue up 32% to $100.7 billion. That is greater than the annual GDP of all but just 38 of the world's economies.
• Exxon illustrates the energy's sector's tremendous profit amid record-high energy prices. The industry is on pace to
earn $96 billion this year — more than what the USA's industrial and telecom companies will earn, combined, says
Standard & Poor's based on members of the S&P 500 index. (Vote: Are oil companies' high profits justified?)
• And it's not just ExxonMobil that's raking it in. Royal Dutch Shell reported net income up 68% to $9 billion Thursday. Earlier this
week, BP (BP) reported a $6.5 billion third-quarter profit and ConocoPhillips (COP) a $3.8 billion profit. Today, ChevronTexaco
(CVX) is expected to post 53% higher earnings of $3.9 billion, says Reuters Estimates.
• The massive profit gains were widely expected giving the soaring price of oil. The price of a barrel of oil hit a record $70 during
the third quarter and, even though it has backed off to $60.80 currently is still up 40% in 2005.

17. 17
Goal of Transition Initiative
Reverses the CONSUMPTION model
into a CREATION model.
 Build the topsoil
 Produce the energy we consume
 Re-Grow the rainforests (and others)
 Create resilient communities and cities
 Retard/Reverse global warming (if possible)
 Improve everyone's standard of living
(quality of life)

18. Energy & Resource Use
Population
Pollution
Climax
Techno-Fantasy
Green-Tech Stability
Earth
stewardship
Mad Max
Great Grand
Children
Agriculture
10.000yrs BP
Industrial
Revolution
Baby Boom
Pre-industrial sustainable
culture
Historical Time
Future Time
Where are we going?

19. However….
The Stone Age didn’t end
because we ran out of
stones…or because the stones
became too expensive

20. 20
Goal of Transition Initiative
Reverses the CONSUMPTION model
into a CREATION model.
 Build the topsoil
 Produce the energy we consume
 Re-Grow the rainforests (and others)
 Create resilient communities and cities
 Retard/Reverse global warming (if possible)
 Improve everyone's standard of living
(quality of life)

21. Energy and Sustainability
SL E-101
Efficiency and Effectiveness

23. Design Requirements
Energy Services Needed
• Heating
• Cooling
• Drying
• Cooking
• Motion
• Light
• Electricity
• Pumping
Energy Sources Available
•Wind
•Electrical
•Mechanical
•Solar
•Electrical
•Thermal
•Biomass
•Biogas
•Wood gas
•Chemical energy
•Hydro
•Electric
•Mechanical
•Ocean systems
•Chemical
•Fuel cells
•Batteries
Mollison Article on
Community Energy Systems

26. Thermodynamics of life
Radiant energy
from the sun at
5000 degrees C
(Low entropy,
High order)
98% is re-radiated at 25
degrees C: Large entropy
increase (less ability to do
work)
2% is converted to
chemical energy:
highly ordered,
great ability to do
work.
Thermal
Energy In
Thermal
Energy Out

27. • Thermodynamics cartoon

28. Materials Cycle, Energy Flows

29. Photosynthesis
Respiration
Atmospheric Carbon Cycle

30. What do these all have in common?

31. Sources of negative entropy on Earth
Earth’s Energy Flows
• Solar greater than 99%
Rest is:
• Gravity/Tides .005 %
• Internal energy 1%
• Chemical
(sulfur driven life forms
in deep sea vents)

32. MUM Energy Course
Fall 2012

33. 2nd Law (entropy) Implications for Technology
Heat Engines - Limits to Energy Conversion Efficiency
Surprisingly simple upper limit to efficiency of heat
engines:
T in
Tout
Tin - Tout
Tin
= 1 - Tin/Tout
Tin – Tout = Change in temperature = Delta T
T must be in absolute temperature scale - Kelvin (deg C) or
Rankine (deg F)
Regardless of Materials or Technology!

34. Betz limit for wind energy
Thermal
Energy In
Maximum fraction of incoming wind energy that can be converted into useful wind generator
energy is 0.59. Range is .2-.4 for practical wind turbines.
Regardless of Materials or Technology!
Total energy in moving
air entering turbine
Converted to
useful wind
turbine energy
Energy in air
leaving turbine

36. Typical Home Energy Breakdown

37. Using Energy Wisely:
Effectiveness and Efficiency for Factor 10

39. Energy Use: How do you know?

41. Veridian

42. US Energy Use

44. Car Energy Analysis

47. "If every U.S. household participates in the campaign and
makes their next light an ENERGY STAR, the nation will save
up to $800 million in energy bills, and the reduction in air
pollution will be equal to removing 1.2 million cars from the
road for one year.”
- EPA Administrator Christie Whitman.
=
vs
And we could shut off four nuclear powerplants overnight -
we wouldn’t need the power anymore

48. Phantom Loads =

49. “America’s televisions draw
enough standby power to light 5
million homes. Generating this
power creates 1 million tons of
carbon emissions”
- Sierra Magazine, July/Aug 2002

50. Earth from space at night
Dark Sky Society
www.darkskysociety.org

51. What are the limits?

52. According to a mid 90’s Rocky Mountain Institute Report:

53. Negawatts
$700 Billion in Savings since 1973:
1/3 from building efficiency, 1/3 vehicle efficiency, 1/3 structural change in economy

54. Barriers
Technical vs Social, Cultural, Political
Refrigerator example

55. =
=
=

56. The Nature of Design: Ecology, Culture, and Human Intention
David W. Orr
Fourth, ecological design at all levels has to do with system structure, not
the rates of change. The focus of ecological design is on systems and
“patterns that connect” (Bateson 1979, 3-4). When we get the
structure right, “the desired result will occur more or less automatically
without further human intervention.” (Ophuls 1992, 288). Consider
two different approaches to the need for mobility. The Amish
communities described in chapter 4 are structured around the capacity
of the horse, which serves to limit human mischief, economic costs,
consumption, dependence on the outside, and ecological damage,
while providing time for human sociability, sources of fertilizer, and the
peace of mind that comes with unhurriedness. In the Amish culture,
the horse is a solar-powered, self replicating, multifunctional structural
solution that eliminates the need for continual management and
regulation of people. Most of us are not about to become Amish, but
we need to discover or own equivalent of the horse.
•
Design - The First Signal of Human Intention

57. In the larger culture we expect laws and regulations to perform the
same function, but they seldom do. The reason has to do with
the fact that we tend to fiddle with particular symptoms rather
than addressing structural causes for our problems. The Clean
Air Act of 1970, for example, aimed to reduce pollution from
auto emissions by attaching catalytic converters to each
automobile- a coefficient solution. More than three decades
later with more cars and more miles driven per car, even with
the lower pollution per vehicle, air quality is little improved and
traffic is worse than ever. The true costs of that system include
the health and ecological effects of air pollution and oil spills,
the lives lost in traffic accidents, the degradation of
communities, an estimated $300 billion per year in subsidies for
cars, parking and fuels, including the military costs of protecting
our sources of imported oil, and the future costs of climate
change. The result is a system that can only work expensively
and destructively. A design solution to transportation, in
contrast, would aim to change the structure of the system
reducing our dependence on the automobile through the
combination of high-speed rail service, light-rail urban trains,
bike trails, and smarter urban design that reduced the need for
transportation in the first place.

58. • The same logic applies to the structures by which we provision
ourselves with food, energy, water, and materials, and dispose
of our waste. Much of our consumption, such as excessive
packaging and preservatives in food, has been engineered into
the system because of the requirements of long-distance
transport. Some of our consumption is due to built in
obsolescence designed to promote yet more consumption.
Some of it, such as the purchase of deadbolt locks and
handguns, is necessary to offset the loss of community
cohesion and trust caused in no small part by the culture of
consumption. Some of our consumption is dictated by urban
sprawl that leads of overdependence on automobiles. We
have, in short, created vastly expensive and destructive
structures to do what could be done better locally with far less
expense and consumption. Redesigning such structures
means learning how politics, tax codes, regulations, building
codes, zoning, and laws work and how they might be made to
work to promote ecological resilience and human sanity.
- David Orr, Nature of Design
• “A designer knows that he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add,
but when there is nothing left to take away.”
• Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

59. Mcdonough Clip
Nature’s operating system /
design principles

60. Tunneling through the cost barrier:
Integrated Design
Ephemeralization -
Substituting intelligence in
design for energy and
materials

61. All the really important mistakes are made
on the first day
Project cost spent
1%
7%
Lifetime costs committed
70%
85%

62. Each function, many elements
Each element, many functions
“Each design element
should have at least 5
non-intrinsic functions” -
Bill Mollison

63. Isolated savings - insulation example

64. Whole systems approach

65. Integrated Design:
Eng Lock Lee Case Study
Project Location:
Carpetmaker Interface Corporation, Shanghai, China
Project: Pump system
Original design called for 14 pumps using ninety-five
horsepower.
Redesigned using an integrated design approach,
pump power was reduced to 7 horsepower - a 92
percent or 12 fold energy saving, while reducing capital
costs and improving performance in every way

66. Side benefits vs Side effects:
Solving for pattern
Amory's friend Eng Lock Lee, one of RMI's favorite efficiency
engineers, came over from Singapore to ride shotgun. He pointed out
that when manufacturing processes are optimized, generally many
other things are optimized as well. For example, using large, straight
pipes, optimally laid out to connect equipment, leads to smaller (and
cheaper) pumps and motors. But it also uses less overall space, saves
noise, yields greater productivity, and requires less maintenance.
Often these non-energy benefits are of far greater value than the
energy savings, yet are rarely calculated. ("I'm beginning to learn it's
really all about plumbing," noted Duncan, as he led Amory and Eng
Lock around the factory.)

67. Interface Case Study cont’d
Design changes:
1) Big pipes and small pumps vs small pipes and big
pumps
2) Install pipes first vs install equipment first
The fatter pipes and cleaner layout yielded not only 92
percent lower pumping energy at a lower total capital cost
but also simpler and faster construction, less use of floor
space, more reliable operation, easier maintenance, and
better performance. As an added bonus, easier thermal
insulation of the straighter pipes saved an additional 70
kilowatts of heat loss, enough to avoid burning about a
pound of coal every two minutes, with a three-month
payback.

68. Factor 10 Economy

69. Integrated Design:
Cool Daylighting

70. Lighting design order
1. Improve the visual quality of the task
2. Improve the geometry of the space
3. Improve lighting quality, cut glare, indirect
lighting
4. Optimize lighting quantity
5. Harvest or distribute natural daylight
6. Optimize the technical equipment - the
luminaires. Lamps, ballasts, etc Note - step 6
not step 1!
7. Controls, Maintenance, Training

71. Return on Brains -trading intelligence in design
for energy and materials
Each year, a typical mechanical engineer will specify
$3,000,000 worth of equipment, enough to raise a utilities
peak load by a megawatt, requiring the utility to invest
several million dollars in infrastructure.
If better education could result in 20-50% more efficient
equipment ( a very conservative estimate) , then over a 30-
year engineering career, the utility would avoid about $6-15
million in present-valued investments per brain, without
taking into account savings in operating energy or pollution.
This returns at least a hundred to a thousand times the extra
cost of the better engineering education

72. Earl Mason, Habitat for Humanity,
Mason City Iowa
1400 sq feet
Occupied by a Family of 4
$175 annual heating and cooling
High insulation levels allow
Building to be heated with
the water heater.
Furnace elimination paid
for extra insulation

73. Perry Bigelow Chicago

74. Superinsulation

75. Isbell Family
Example
Start:1380 kwh, $150/mo, powered by utiltiy
End: 100 kwh per month powered by solar,
What they did:
•Upgrade 45 light bulbs
•Eliminate phantom loads
•(These first two items saved 35% or 350 kwh)
•Replace fridge, washing machine
•Replaced electric dryer and electric stove with ga
•Convert to solar hot water

76. RMI, Snowmass, Co

77. RMI Renovation video
http://www.jetsongreen.com/2009/09/video-
amory-lovins-super-green-home.html
http://on.wsj.com/KQyrQL

78. Herman Miller building, Michigan

81. Jefferson County Statistics
Population: 16,181
Households: 6649
Energy Use Assumptions:
Gasoline/Diesel: $50/household/mo
Home heating: $1000/yr
Hot Water: $30/mo
Electricity: $100/mo
Annual Energy Consumption:
Gasoline/Diesel: $ 4,000,000
Home Heating: $ 6,650,000
Hot Water: $ 2,400,000
Electricity $ 8,000,000
TOTAL $21,050,000 (Residential Only!)
20 Year Total: $420 MILLION DOLLARS

82. Statewide Residential Energy Costs:
Iowa Annual total:
$3.9 billion
Iowa 20 yr total:
$78 billion

83. Osage Iowa
Cost: $250,000
Savings: $1,200,000 Per Year
# of residents: 3600
"I don't see any difference between a
dollar brought in by a new business and
a dollar that's saved due to energy
conservation," Wes Birdsall, Supervisor,
Osage Municipal Utilties

84. Compliance
*Ninety-six percent of users have had load management devices
installed on their central air conditioners
*100% have received insulating jackets for their water heaters
*950 compact fluorescent light bulbs are in use.
Efficiency Measures
*Instead of having to add generating capability as projected in
1984, Osage has been able to delay it until 2000.
*Since 1974, Osage has reduced its natural gas consumption by
45% and reduced its annual growth in electricity demand from
6% to 3%.
*Osage Municipal Utilities has been able reduce electricity rates
by 19% during the last eight years and natural gas rates by 5%
during the last five years.
*Infrared scans reveal that 85% - 90% of all homes are now well
insulated.
Osage cont’d…..

85. How they did it
•Free use of electric test meters to locate inefficient appliances.
•Infrared scans of all businesses and homes.
•Scans of the electrical system to identify line loss.
•A load management program that cuts electric peak loads by up to
10%.
•A home weatherization program for low-income customers.
•Free compact fluorescent bulb giveaways and rebates.
•Low-cost leasing of a hydraulically-operated tree planter to replace
dead elm trees, saving up to 50% on air conditioning bills. Trees are
donated by Osage Nursery.
•Complete energy audits with interest buy downs for efficiency
projects.
•Efficiency training in elementary and secondary schools allowing
students to take ideas home.

86. If Jefferson Co replicated Osage…
Cost: $1,120,000
Savings: $5,400,000 Per Year
# of residents: 16,181
20 yr total savings: $107,000,000
20 yr savings per resident: $6600
"I don't see any difference between a
dollar brought in by a new business and
a dollar that's saved due to energy
conservation," Wes Birdsall, Supervisor,
Osage Municipal Utilties

87. 2000 Watt Society
Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. Switzerland
• Cut overall rate of energy use to 2000 watts (17,520 kwh per
year) by 2050 without lowering standard of living
• Current rate of energy use:
– USA - 12,000 watts
– Western Europe - 6,000 watts
– China - 1500 watts
– India - 1000 watts
– Bangladesh - 300 watts

88. 2000 watt initiative
Breakdown of average energy consumption by Swiss person
(July 2008):
* 1500 watts for living and office space (this includes heat
and hot water)
* 1100 watts for food and consumer discretionary (including
transportation of these to the point of sale)
* 600 watts for electricity
* 500 watts for automobile travel
* 250 watts for air travel
* 150 watts for public transportation
* 900 watts for public infrastructure
Switzerland was last a 2000 watt society in 1950

89. 2000 watt cont’d
“It is envisaged that achieving the aim of a 2000-watt society will
require, amongst other measures, a complete reinvestment in
the country's capital assets; refurbishment of the nation's
building stock to bring it up to low energy building standards;
significant improvements in the efficiency of road transport,
aviation and energy-intensive material use; the possible
introduction of high-speed maglev trains; the use of
renewable energy sources, district heating, microgeneration
and related technologies; and a refocusing of research into
new priority areas.
As a result of the intensified research and development effort
required, it is hoped that Switzerland will become a leader in
the technologies involved. Indeed, the idea has a great deal of
government backing, due to fears about climate change”

90. Waste Heat Recovery

91. Relative Location
Notre Dame University Computer Servers
Housing servers in the desert dome (a greenhouse), where air currents can
carry away their waste heat, is expected to save the university about
$100,000 in cooling costs. Meanwhile, the city will save some of the
$70,000 it spends each year to keep the conservatory warm. Given that
the conservatory was cut out of the city’s 2010 budget altogether, such
steps toward self-sufficiency are necessary to ensure its continued
existence.

92. Cogeneration

94. Jefferson County Cogen Co
• Jefferson Co residential use: 75 million KWH
• Plant Size: 10 MW
• Annual KWH production: 74 million KWH
• Fuel: Baled switchgrass
• Acres required: 5,200
• Acres in Jefferson co: 261,000
• Payments to Farmers: $2-3 Million
• Cost electricity: 6 cents/kwh
• Waste heat available: equiv to 5,000,000 gallons of oil - could
heat 12,000 not-efficient homes or hundreds of acres of
greenhouses
• Plant cost: $15-20 Million
• Current Jefferson Co Residential Electricity Costs: $8 Million

95. Eco - efficiency vs Eco-effectiveness:
A critique of efficiency-only approaches
Efficient at what - efficiency alone is not a virtue
Less bad vs good
Goal of efficiency
Beyond efficiency and sustainability
Fecundity and abundance
Mexico- Canada analogy
Photosynthesis and Cherry blossoms

97. William Mcdonough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53WWhZ9XxzM

98. Critique of Efficiency
• Efficient at what? Efficiency is not a virtue like
truth, love, or beauty
• Ecoefficiency vs Ecoeffectiveness
– Less bad solutions vs effective solutions
• Can extend the lifetime and applicability of
poor design solutions
• Jevon’s Paradox

101. ………Sailing to a clean energy economy

102. "....we realized that the conventional
wisdom is mistaken in seeing priorities in
economic, environmental and social
policy as competing. The best solutions
are based not on tradeoffs or "balance"
between these objectives but on design
integration achieving all of them together -
at every level from technical devices to
production systems to companies to
economic sectors to entire cities and
societies "
- Amory Lovins, Natural Capitalism

103. "For all thinkers and researchers in any area
of science and technology it is vital to
maintain wakefulness of the total potential of
Natural Law - self referral consciousness.
Only this will ensure purity of principles on
the theoretical level of scientific research and
pollution free technology"
-Maharishi

105. Lawrence A. Gamble, P.E.
Abundance Ecovillage
1860 Woodland Drive
Fairfield, Iowa 52556
Tel 641-469-5240
E-mail lonniegamble@yahoo.com
www.abundance-ecovillage.com
Ecovillage Development/Consulting/Education

106. EFFICIENCY, EFFECTIVENESS, DESIGN, AND ENERGY
Nature’s design intelligence resides in the unified field
WHOLENESS OF THE LESSON
The efficiency and effectiveness of a system depends largely in decisions
made in the first few hours of design.
In higher states of consciousness efficiency and effectiveness in action is
spontaneous
MAIN POINTS
1. Most of the energy that flows through the economy is wasted. Nature
grows niches that effectively use energy at it’s highest level
Most of this wasted energy could be economically saved using cost effective,
state of the shelf technologies. .
There is a difference between conservation and efficiency. Conservation is
doing less with less. Efficiency is doing more with less. Both are
necessary. Growing in development of consciousness, one begins to
operate with the spontaneous efficiency and effectiveness of nature.
Design is critical to efficiency. Nature’s designs are efficient and effective.
Efficiency means using less materials and energy to perform a task. It says
nothing about whether you are doing the right thing. What we want is
positive good – effectiveness, of which efficiency is just a part. Design
is more comprehensive when awareness is more comprehensive

107. What could we do?

108. Osage Example
Vital Statistics
Program Management/Partnerships: Osage Municipal Utilities
Demand-Side Management is a program of Osage Municipal
Utilities (OMU). OMU works in partnership with Osage Nursery,
the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and the U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE). Budget: The program has cost
OMU about $250,000, but has saved them -- and the city --
millions. Community Served: The 3,600 residents of Osage,
Iowa. Measures of Success: Financial*Osage saves more than
$1.2 million a year in energy costs.*The average homeowner
saves almost $200 a year in energy bills; the average business
saves even more.

109. Osage cont’d
Environmental Benefits *Over their lifetime, the 950 compact
fluorescent bulbs in use will prevent the burning of nearly 200 tons
of coal. *Every year the compact fluorescent bulbs will reduce
annual pollution by nearly 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide and 13
tons of sulfur dioxide.
Program Replication *Numerous utilities across the United States
and world have asked for information regarding the OMU program,
including the Electricity Supply Association of New Zealand and
the Swedish Power Board. The program has been replicated by 36
other Iowa utilities.

110. =
=
=

111. Economists for the state of Nebraska estimate that only 20
cents worth of of every dollar spent on energy bills stays in the
state. The rest leaves the state economy without generating
further economic activity.
Energy conservation, in contrast has an economic multiplier
of $2.32, meaning that every $1.00 spent conserving energy
generates $2.32 in local economic activity.
Local Economy:
Energy Efficiency

112. “America’s televisions draw
enough standby power to light 5
million homes. Generating this
power creates 1 million tons of
carbon emissions”
- Sierra Magazine, July/Aug 2002

113. Auto Energy Analysis

114. If Poweshiek County
Copied Osage…….
Cost: $1,320,000 one time cost
Savings: $ 6,300,000 per Year
20 yr total: 127,000,000
20 yr total per person: $6,666
20 yr total per houshold:$17,100
Population: 19,000
Households: 7,400

115. Mcdonough web clip
The Manager vs the Executive

116. =
=
=

117. Inherent Limits
to Efficiency Improvements
There are inherent thermodynamic limits to energy conversion
efficiencies (2nd law of thermodynamics).
The supply-side energy efficiency, currently at 37%, can be
increased by at most two-fold.
The end-use energy efficiency can probably be increased by
two to three-fold.
Total energy efficiency can be increased by five-fold.
There are limits to improving the efficiency of materials use
since one cannot indefinitely “angelize” the economy.
There are limits to improving labor productivities since service
sector and professional jobs cannot be mechanized.

118. Unintended Consequences
of Efficiency Solutions
Increased vulnerability to resource shortages.
The problem of reverse adaptation: Efficiencies (means)
become ends in themselves.
Optimization of technical efficiencies strengthens materialistic
values and leads to neglect of non-material values.
Excessive focus on efficiency improvements may destroy the
quality of life.
• Greater exploitation of workers and the environment (e.g., assembly line).
• Positive bias towards the quantifiable, leading to neglect of cultural or personal
values such as fairness, equity, freedom, creativity, faith and aesthetics.
• Strong focus on rational problem solving while ignoring subjective viewpoints,
potentially creating a world devoid of love and empathy.

119. Conclusions
Historical data demonstrate that many efficiency
improvements have not been able to reverse the growth in
the use of limited resources.
There are inherent thermodynamic and practical limits to all
efficiency improvements. Therefore, it is impossible to have
continued economic growth without increased use of limited
natural resources and associated pollution.
The are numerous unintended side-effects to efficiency
solutions. Society must avoid the “reverse adapation” problem
by first defining societal values and goals BEFORE using
technology with better efficiency to achieve them.
Resource use (R) declines with time only if efficiency (e)
improvements outpace the growth in the demand for benefits
(B), i.e., e increases FASTER than B.