Reinventing Fire

How U.S. businesses can lead the nation from oil and coal to efficiency and renewables by 2050, and profit in the process

Oil and coal have built our civilization, created our wealth, and enriched the lives of billions. Yet their rising costs to our security, economy, health, and environment are starting to outweigh their benefits. Moreover, the tipping point where alternatives work better and compete purely on cost is not decades in the future: it is here and now. And that tipping point has become the fulcrum of economic transformation.

A global clean energy race has already emerged with astounding speed. The ability to replace fossil fuels with efficient use and renewable supply, swiftly and scalably, will define winners and losers among firms—and among nations.

The United States’ capital, technology, and entrepreneurship equip it for success in this race. Yet it’s been held back by lack of coherent vision, pervasive political gridlock, and shorting the scope for dynamic business leadership. Now, in Reinventing Fire, Amory Lovins and Rocky Mountain Institute offer a new vision to revitalize business models, end-run Washington gridlock, and win the clean energy race—not forced by public policy but led by business for durable advantage.

This independent and rigorous synthesis—peer-reviewed and documented on a technical website—offers market-based solutions integrating transportation, buildings, industry, and electricity. It maps pathways for running a 158%-bigger U.S. economy in 2050 but needing no oil, no coal, no nuclear energy, one-third less natural gas, and no new inventions. This transition would cost $5 trillion less than business-as-usual—without counting fossil fuels’ huge hidden costs.

Reinventing Fire’s business case is so compelling that its execution wouldn’t require new federal taxes, subsidies, mandates, or laws. The policy innovations needed to unlock and speed the transition can be implemented with no Act of Congress—often at state level, where utilities are already largely regulated and where the key automotive step, feebates, could readily be adopted.

Whether you care most about profits and jobs, or national security, or environmental stewardship, climate, and health, Reinventing Fire makes sense and makes money. Written for all of America’s leaders, it’s a story of astounding choices and opportunities for creating the new energy era.

About the Author

Amory Lovins, a consultant physicist, is among the world’s leading experts in energy and its links with resources, security, development, and environment. He has advised the energy and other industries for four decades as well as the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense. His work in 50+ countries has been recognized by the “Alternative Nobel,” Blue Planet, Volvo, Zayed Future Energy (Runner-Up), Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, Goff Smith, and Mitchell Prizes, the Benjamin Franklin and Happold Medals, MacArthur and Ashoka Fellowships, 11 honorary doctorates, honorary membership of the American Institute of Architects, Foreign Membership of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, honorary Senior Fellowship of the Design Futures Council, and the Heinz, Lindbergh, Jean Meyer, Time Hero for the Planet, Time International Hero of the Environment, Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Leadership, National Design, and World Technology Awards. A Harvard and Oxford dropout and former Oxford don, he has briefed 20 heads of state and advises major firms and governments worldwide, recently including the leadership of Coca-Cola, Deutsche Bank, Ford, Holcim, Interface, and Wal-Mart. He cofounded in 1982 and serves as Chairman and Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute, an independent, market-oriented, entrepreneurial, nonprofit, nonpartisan think-and-do tank that creates abundance by design. His most recent visiting academic chair was in spring 2007 as MAP/Ming Professor in Stanford’s School of Engineering, offering the University’s first course on advanced energy efficiency (www.rmi.org/stanford). The latest of his 30 books are Small Is Profitable: The Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size, an Economist book of the year blending financial economics with electrical engineering, Winning the Oil Endgame. An anthology from his 1968–2010 work, The Essential Amory Lovins, is being released this year. He is also the co-author of the sustainable business classic, Natural Capitalism. In 2009, Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and Foreign Policy, one of the 100 top global thinkers.