Amory Lovins: The Age Of Silicon Is “Harvesting The Breath And Radiance Of Heaven.”

It’s exciting to be involved in the energy industry transition to the smart grid and renewable energy.

It’s breathtaking to witness Amory Lovins pulling back the curtain on the enormity of the change we are experiencing.

Lovins, Chief Scientist + Co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, took questions at the Institute’s 35th anniversary on August 3, 2017. NY Times columnist Tom Friedman asked Lovins what the was “most exciting, new new thing out there.”

Source: Rocky Mountain Institute

He started his answer by pointing to the convergence of energy and information technology (look at about 33:00). Then he stepped back: “Let me put this in a bigger context.

“The energy transformation we are in the middle of… is not just fundamental, it’s elemental. We started with hundreds of years, or well over a millennia if you look at Chinese industry, of the age of carbon. We built our mightiest industries, our wealth, our military prowess, all of the elements of our power and success, by digging up and burning each year what’s now about four cubic miles of the rotted remains of primeval swamp goo. We are really, really good at it. It’s just incredible what these industries do for us.

“We are now, however, in a transition, from that increasingly obsolete and uncompetitive age of carbon to the age of silicon. Silicon microchips turn people from isolated to networked, systems from dumb to smart. Silicon power electronics make electricity precisely controllable and deliverable, so we can shift from firey molecules to obedient electrons.”

Here’s where Lovins blew my mind: “Silicon solar cells enable the ascent of energy from mining the fires of hell—it’s a pretty good theological analogy, that hot sulfurous stuff down there—to harvesting the breath and radiance of heaven."

That is an extraordinary perspective—our society lifting its energy vision from the depths to the skies.

I was introduced to Lovins and his practical, even-handed research on the clean energy economy in his book Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era. Lovins is not some firebrand enviro-terrorist, but a physicist, researcher and advisor to corporations and governments worldwide. His prescriptions are based in economics and business. So when he evokes a biblical metaphor, it’s worth your time to think about it.

It makes me think about the nature of the future energy grid. The original utility model was constructed to be highly centralized, with power flowing down from large generation plants through carefully controlled channels to passive consumers. It reminds me of how civilizations were initially organized, around chiefs and monarchs. And by depending on a few power sources and sprawling transmission lines, the original model is inherently brittle in the face of natural or man-made catastrophes.

With renewable energy becoming more economical than coal, gas or nuclear (and unlike fossil and nuclear choices, renewable costs will continue to go down for the foreseeable future), the electrical grid is evolving into a distributed generation model (think solar panels on homes and businesses) serving active “prosumers” who may buy and sell power with the utility and each other. This more democratic system creates a platform for a more resilient and sustainable energy grid. Even better, early indications suggest that it can drive down the cost of power as well, making it more accessible to all.

That's the right direction for our electrical grid, and for society in general. And it's one important outcome of ascendance of energy based not on dinosaurs from million of years in past, but photons that will keep lighting and warming the earth for millions of years to come. I believe!