Earth Equity News

The Elusive Negawatt. Economist, May 12, 2008. "In wonkish circles, energy efficiency used to be known as 'the fifth fuel'… No wonder that wonks now tend to prefer 'negawatts' to megawatts as the best method of slaking the world's growing thirst for energy... The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), the research arm of the consultancy, thinks that energy efficiency could get the world halfway towards the goal... of keeping the concentration of greenhouse gases... below 550 ppm. MGI is particularly enthusiastic because it believes that unlike most other schemes to reduce emissions, a global energy-efficiency drive would be profitable. The measures it has in mind, all of which rely on existing technology, would earn an average return of 17% and a minimum of 10%... In other words, big investments in energy efficiency would more than pay for themselves, and fairly fast. Although a lot of money would have to be spent -- $170 billion a year until 2020 -- by MGI's reckoning that is only 1.6% of today's global annual investment in fixed capital. Moreover, with ample profits to be made, financing should be easy to attract. Yet if there are so many lucrative opportunities... why are investors not already taking advantage of them?" [Amory Lovins coined the word 'negawatt' in The Negawatt Revolution, a speech given to the Montreal Green Energy Conference in 1989.]