I become aware that the harder I work at my stall the more Junk Joules smiles. What’s going on? I have got great products. They make great use of the sun and the air and life. Why does the joke seem on me. Again I sense it is to do with the image of ‘negawatts’. Then I notice that Junk Joules is singing and playing wih an electricity cable.
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The
concept of negawatts remains very difficult to define. If you search for the
definition on the web the top
reference is:
From
GreenTrust, the free encyclopedia.
It
hasn’t yet made it into the Webster’s Dictionary, but you will find the
following definition of “negawatt” and the following quotes on the internet:
Negawatt (n) - a measure of energy efficiency; a unit in
watts of energy saved.
"Every negawatt generated has the potential to
increase our wealth and health as few other investments can. Negawatts enable us
to do more with less and the opportunities are almost boundless. Energy
efficiency is the great new energy resource of our future and a vital key to a
sustainable environment."
The word “negawatt” was coined by Amory Lovins, a
Harvard and Oxford-educated experimental physicist who is CEO of the Rocky
Mountain Institute (http://www.rmi.org/) and a Time Magazine “Hero
of the Planet”. In 1989 Lovins gave the keynote address at a Green Energy
Conference in Montreal . You can read this fascinating address on the web; it is
called “The Negawatt Revolution: Solving the CO2 problem”.
Lovins makes the case, very persuasively, that enormous
amounts of energy are wasted in North America . ($300 billion per year in the
U.S. and $30 billion per year in Canada ) By increasing our energy efficiency we
can “generate” large amounts of power without building any new power plants
or buying any fuel for existing plants.
This
has been the main reference for several years now. The definition and quote from
the web is mine. In 2000 I began to work for a genius called Grant Dunford who
has a small “energy efficiency” firm here in New Zealand called Negawatt
Resources Ltd. I tried to find a
definition of negawatt from many sources – including Amory Lovins – and
failed. The Oxford Dictionary offered an on-line service searching definitions
and wrote saying the best it could advise is that a negawatt is a measure of
energy efficiency. So I wrote the above definition and related quote.
The negawatt symbol is now widely used in some sectors and there is
negawatt legislation and trading in which Bulk-generated electricity retailers
or users are rewarded for reducing demand at peak load times.
For instance see the Wiki
article regarding Bulk-generated electricity Negawatt Power
The
concept of a negawatt is a difficult one, particularly as our current economic
model describes all economic activity as good regardless of how destructive it
is of communities and the wider environment. At present if an activity results
in the reduced consumption of certain commodities – such as Bulk-generated
electricity and fossil fuels – then the economy is described as failing even
if people are on balance better off.
In
the hands of the unscrupulous the negawatt concept can be easily abused. The
problem is that the measure of something not used can be taken to a near
limitless extent. It is easy to say you had intended to use trillion trillion
Gigawatts of Bulk-gen electricity today but then decided not to.
My
definition now simply reads
Definition
negawatt (n) – a measure of energy efficiency.
As
the 2002 cartoon suggests I believe the negawatt symbol contains major flaws:
As
I found answering the phone for Negawatt Resources a large number of people
associate “nega” with negative and are perplexed why we should associate
energy efficiency with negativity.
Most
people have been conditioned to associate Watts with Bulk-generated electricity
where as often the wise use of resources (energy efficiency) involves exploiting
the joules that are available from solar, wind and resources other than Bulk-gen
electricity. Negawatt Resources, for instance, retailed solar panels,
insulation, efficient showerheads etc and yet its very name triggered awareness
of Bulk-generated electricity.
I
worked for OnEnergy in New Zealand (a corporation cloned by Arthur Andersen and
Co from the likes of Enron) and so gained intimate insight into the limitations
of the negwatts concept. Profits from energy efficiency measures were often
reinvested in extremely unsustainable activities such as jet partying and
lobbying against efficient uses of Bulk-gen electricity.
Energy efficiency practice is personal act of stewardship and is a constant
on-going process. By contrast the Market has no sense of stewardship and tends
to serve short-term interests.
Energy
efficiency is not about doing more using less. It is about using resources so
that the sustaining balances of our planet are conserved. It is possible to use
a lot more energy by choosing activities that use plentiful resources (such as
the sun) instead of choosing activities that use up very limited resources (such
as fossil fuels).
To
avoid these flaws I propose the twin, complementary and co-evolving measures of
relative energy efficiency:
bonusjoules (n) -the measure of an activity driven by long-term low-risk
considerations and
junkjoules (n) – the measure of an activity driven by short-term high-risk
considerations
An
act that can be considered to generate bonusjoules in one moment can be
considered to generate junkjoules in the next as technology, knowledge and
resources change.
For example the use of an incandescent light bulb can be considered to generate
bonusjoules i.e. be more efficient than burning whale oil for lighting. However
the advent of the compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) means the use of incandescent
bulbs can be now seen as inefficient. More lumens of light can be used while the
amount of Bulk-generated electricity used is reduced.
Click here for more discussion of bonusjoules-junkjoules measures of energy efficiency.
Return to Open Letter to Amory Lovins
Chapter Five - Land of the Other- Negawatts and Junk Joules.
Bonus Joules and the Knowledge Economy: All images on this site are copyright.