By MATTHEW L. WALD

Amory B. Lovins, the longtime efficiency guru, has a new book out that analyzes the possibility of converting the nation to almost total reliance on renewable sources of energy. The conclusions may not win instant acceptance, but it is certainly in the running for the best-blurbed energy book of the year.
Chelsea Green Publishing
“Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era” carries a quote on the cover from Bill Clinton, who says it is a “wise, detailed and comprehensive blueprint.” Both Marvin Odum, the president of Shell Oil, and John W. Rowe, the chairman and chief executive of Exelon, wrote forewords..
Released at an event on Thursday morning at National Geographic’s headquarters in Washington, the book credits both Mr. Lovins, a physicist, and staff members of his Rocky Mountain Institute as authors.
Mr. Lovins has long argued that the world should pay more attention to efficiency and that it has prospered when it has done so.

He gives the example of pumping water from a pipe; if the power plant that supplies the electricity starts with 100 units of energy, it will lose two-thirds of that in making the current and another 10 percent in transmission and distribution. The motor will be only 90 percent efficient; so pumps, motors, drive trains and throttling valves along the way will lose more, leaving the plant with 93 units of energy.
One argument advanced in his book is that renewable energy is already cheaper than fossil fuels, which he describes as “ancient pond scum.”
One reason is that the price is fixed, Mr. Lovins says. A company that set out to hedge the future price of, say, gasoline by buying financial instruments to assure a fixed cost in the future will spend $2.95 a gallon to do so for the next five years, he writes.
That’s just for the insurance policy on the price, not for the gasoline itself, he said in a telephone interview. “The volatility imposes risk on a business, and risk means cost,’’ he said. “You can’t plan sensibly if you’re whipsawed by prices bouncing all over the place.”
Renewable energy, on the other hand, is riskless, he said, because once the project is built, the energy costs are fixed. His analysis predicts further declines in prices for renewables.
And just as whale oil for home lighting was supplanted by kerosene and then by the electric light, fossil fuels are about to be replaced by renewables, Mr. Lovins predicts.
Wind power is already cheaper than power from natural gas, even at today’s depressed natural gas prices, he contends. But the electric system will have to adapt to use it.
The book is a broad look at buildings, transportation, the electric system and industrial energy use. In the interview, Mr. Lovins paraphrased a saying attributed to President Dwight D. Eisenhower: that if a problem seems to have no solution, the best approach is to enlarge it.
For example, he said, if the electricity system finds it challenging to run on energy from the wind and sun, which cannot be scheduled by system controllers, the solution is to combine the electricity and transportation systems, hooking up millions of car batteries that can deliver energy as well as accept it.
(Source: www.nytimes.com )