Amory Lovins to Speak Jun 12 (Link to Presentation)

I belong to NTREG, the North Texas Renewable Energy Group and we are having Physicist Amory Lovins speak to us by Zoom this coming Saturday June 12 at 10AM. Lovins is cofounder and Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute and will be speaking on “Disruptive Energy Futures”. We invite interested people to join the Zoom meeting and consider joining the NTREG. You do not need to be an NTREG member to join this meeting.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88420880577?pwd=QXZWZjh2MUx0NUZQTE5oV0ppQi9KUT09

Date: Saturday, June 12, 2021
Time: 10:00 am - 12:00 noon

Meeting ID: 884 2088 0577
Passcode: 033083

p.s. I myself became a DMS member after a tour when NTREG met here once.

About Our Presentation:
Unexpected developments in advanced energy efficiency and modern renewable supplies will accelerate the transformation of today’s energy supply industries. The new energy future rapidly emerging, often at grassroots level, offers exciting opportunities for stronger communities and a richer, cooler, fairer, safer world. Oil suppliers have more unsellable than unburnable oil; they are more at risk from competition than from climate regulation. Electricity suppliers too face a swarm of disruptors that will transform their business beyond recognition. As these two vast industries merge and as insurgents in both challenge incumbents, almost everything we thought we knew about energy is ripe for rapid and profound change.

As it confronts troubling fundamentals, the oil industry’s most basic challenge is not lowered prices but weakening demand as customers find powerful new ways to save or displace oil. Oil suppliers are more at risk from competition with those new technologies than from climate regulation. Every significant global market for oil, and increasingly for natural gas too, is challenged by disruptive competitors—especially on the demand side—that hydrocarbon suppliers scarcely track, from radically efficient vehicles to superior ways to get around without them (or, through smart urban design, not need to). The pace of transformation may exceed what oil companies’ culture can manage. As the world begins to embrace a low-carbon future, global “peak oil” demand in as few as five years, and the prospect of profitably getting off oil by 2050, what are the strategic implications and opportunities?

Meanwhile, the electricity industry’s basic assumptions since the 1890s - ever-rising demand, ever-bigger and hence-cheaper power plants, hence falling prices-have reversed. Electricity providers face at least eight simultaneous disruptors on both the demand and supply sides that will transform its technologies, institutions, finances, and business models beyond recognition. These transformations don’t add; they multiply and exponentiate. Incumbents’ efforts to fight disruptors may actually strengthen them. Navigating these rapids presents an exciting opportunity for agile entrepreneurs, an extraordinary test of the industry’s leadership skills, and an opportunity to start turning power supplies from brittle to resilient - an attribute of special importance to Texans these days.

Together, these two emergent stories of profound disruption bring into question almost everything we thought we knew about energy.

About Our Presenter:
Physicist Amory Lovins is cofounder and Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute; energy advisor to major firms and governments in 65+ countries for more than 40 years; author of 31 books and 600+ papers; and designer of superefficient buildings, factories, and vehicles. He received the Blue Planet, Volvo, Zayed, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, and Mitchell Prizes, MacArthur and Ashoka Fellowships, 12 honorary doctorates, the Heinz, Lindbergh, Right Livelihood (“alternative Nobel”), National Design, and World Technology Awards, and the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit (awarded by the President of Germany). A Harvard and Oxford dropout, former Oxford don, honorary US architect, and Swedish engineering academician, he’s taught at ten universities, most recently Stanford’s Engineering School and the Naval Postgraduate School. Amory is a member of the U.S. National Petroleum Council and and member of the Chief of Naval Operations’ Advisory Board. Time named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people; Foreign Policy, one of the 100 top global thinkers.

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The presentation was recorded and I will provide the link when it is ready. It was a fascinating talk with all sorts of things I wasn’t aware of concerning energy efficiency and the disruptive transformation that is happening right now. He also discussed the Texas February power outages and how renewables held up vs. other power sources. It was truly an amazing presentation.

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Here is the link to Amory Lovin’s talk “Disruptive Energy Futures”. It is the first one.

https://www.ntreg.org/pastmeetings.html

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