The cost is half, the return is double. Costs - half, returns - double Make a profit. Efficient use of resources usually pays off: you don't have to pay for resources now, and since they don't become pollutants, you won't

02.12.2021

Roman club- an international public organization created by the Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei (who became its first president) and the OECD Director General for Science Alexander King on April 6-7, 1968, uniting representatives of the world political, financial, cultural and scientific elite. The organization has made a significant contribution to the study of the prospects for the development of the biosphere and the promotion of the idea of harmonizing the relationship between man and nature.

Forester's World Dynamics (1971), which stated that further development humanity on a physically limited planet Earth will lead to an ecological catastrophe in the 20s of the next century.

D. Meadows project ( en

) "Limits to Growth" (1972) - the first report to the Club of Rome, completed Forrester's study. But the "system dynamics" method proposed by Meadows was not suitable for working with a regional world model, so the Meadows model was criticized fiercely. Nevertheless, the Forrester-Meadows model was given the status of the first report of the Club of Rome.

In 1974 the second report of the Club was published. It was headed by members of the Club of Rome M. Mesarovich ( en

) and E. Pestel. "Humanity at the Crossroads" proposed the concept of "organic growth", according to which each region of the world should perform its own specific function, like a cell in a living organism. The concept of "organic growth" was fully adopted by the Club of Rome and still remains one of the main ideas it advocates.

report J. Tinbergen"Revising the International Order" Tinbergen presented in his report a project for restructuring the structure of the world economy.

the work of the president of the Club A. Peccei "Human qualities" (1980). Peccei proposes six, as he calls "starting" goals, which are related to the "outer limits" of the planet; "inner limits" of the person himself; cultural heritage of peoples; formation of the world community; environmental protection and reorganization of the production system.

A special place among the reports to the Club of Rome is occupied by Eduard Pestel's report "Beyond Growth" (1987), dedicated to the memory of Aurelio Peccei. It discusses the current problems of "organic growth" and the prospects for the possibility of their solution in a global context, taking into account both the achievements of science and technology, including microelectronics, biotechnology, nuclear energy, and the international situation.

In 1991, for the first time, a report appeared on behalf of the Club of Rome itself, written by its president Alexander King (en ) and General Secretary Bertrand Schneider - "The First Global Revolution". Summing up the results of its twenty-five years of activity, the Council of the Club again and again refers to the recent changes in the world and characterizes the current state of global issues in the context of the new situation in international relations that have arisen after the end of the long confrontation between East and West; a new economic situation emerging as a result of the creation of new blocs, the emergence of new geostrategic forces; new priorities in global issues such as population, environment, resources, energy, technology, finance, etc.

In 1997, another report of the Club of Rome “Factor Four. Costs - half, return - double ", which was prepared by Weizsacker E. (de ), Lovins E., Lovins L. The purpose of this work was to solve the questions raised in previous works of the Club of Rome and, above all, in the first report "The Limits to Growth". The main idea of this report aroused unprecedented interest around the world. Its essence lies in the fact that modern civilization has reached a level of development at which the growth of production in virtually all sectors of the economy can be carried out in a progressive economy without attracting additional resources and energy. Humanity 'can live twice as rich with only half the resources'

BILLION THEORY

The golden billion consumes the lion's share of all resources on the planet. If at least half of humanity begins to consume resources in the same volume, they will obviously not be enough.

Until the end of the last century, the main consumer of mineral raw materials remained the "golden billion" - approximately one sixth of humanity living in developed countries. The overconcentration of demand was especially characteristic of the raw material elite - non-ferrous metals. Due to their high cost (lead is three times, and nickel is forty times more expensive than iron) and their predominant use in technically complex industries and innovative products, the consumption of basic non-ferrous metals in medium-developed countries was an order of magnitude, and in underdeveloped countries, two or three orders of magnitude inferior to Western countries. . In the 70s - 80s of the last century, highly developed countries consumed 90% of all aluminum, 85% of copper and 80% of nickel .

The idea of limited resources first appeared in the works Thomas Malthus. He predicted a global crisis due to the fact that population grows in geometric progression, and resource industries - in arithmetic, and will have to be exhausted in the foreseeable future ( Malthusianism).

AT XX century There has been a significant increase in productivity in agriculture(albeit at the expense of a huge increase in energy consumption), many new materials have been developed that have reduced the need for raw materials, due to technical progress also reduced material consumption in those industries in which it was not possible to replace natural raw materials with synthesized ones. At the same time, there was a rapid growth explored reserves mineral. However, in the middle of the 20th century it was predicted peak oil.

According to S. Kara-Murza, behind the term "golden billion" is a certain, integral geopolitical, economic and cultural concept: developed countries, while maintaining a high level of consumption for their population, will use political, military and economic measures to keep the rest of the world in an industrially undeveloped state as an appendage of raw materials, a zone for dumping hazardous waste and a source of cheap labor.

According to S. Kara-Murza, the Golden Billion, as a concept, involves manipulation of public consciousness, to save " sustainable growth" in the countries of the golden billion - and disconnecting "raw material appendages" from the possibility of independent development, independent penetration into the capitalist market, from the information, technological and financial capabilities of the "civilized world".

Question #13

Noosphere - sphere of interaction societies and nature, within which intelligent human activity becomes the determining factor development(this sphere is also denoted by the terms "anthroposphere", " biosphere»).

The noosphere is supposedly a new, higher stage of evolution biosphere, the formation of which is associated with the development societies which has a profound effect on natural processes. According to V. I. Vernadsky, “in the biosphere there is a great geological, perhaps cosmic force, the planetary action of which is usually not taken into account in ideas about outer space… This power is intelligence human, aspiring and organized will him as a social being.

In the noospheric teaching, a person appears rooted in nature, and the “artificial” is considered as an organic part and one of the factors (increasing in time) of the evolution of the “natural”. Summarizing human history from the standpoint of a naturalist, Vernadsky concludes that humanity, in the course of its development, is turning into a new powerful geological force, transforming the face of the planet with its thought and labor. Accordingly, in order to preserve itself, it will have to take responsibility for the development of the biosphere, turning into the noosphere, and this will require from it a certain social organization and a new, ecological and at the same time humanistic ethics.

The noosphere can be characterized as the unity of "nature" and "culture". Vernadsky himself spoke of it either as a reality of the future, or as a reality of our days, which is not surprising, since he thought in terms of geological time. “The biosphere has repeatedly passed into a new evolutionary state…- notes V. I. Vernadsky. - We are experiencing this even now, over the past 10-20 thousand years, when a person, having developed a scientific thought in the social environment, creates a new geological force in the biosphere, which has never been seen in it. The biosphere has passed or, rather, is moving into a new evolutionary state - into the noosphere - being processed by the scientific thought of a social person.("Scientific thought as a planetary phenomenon"). Thus, the concept of "noosphere" appears in two aspects:

1. the noosphere in its infancy, developing spontaneously from the moment of the appearance of man;

2. developed noosphere, consciously formed by the joint efforts of people in the interests of the comprehensive development of all mankind and each individual

The concept of "noosphere" was proposed professor mathematics SorbonneEdouard Leroy(1870-1954), who interpreted it as a "thinking" shell, formed by human consciousness.

The most complete embodiment of Leroy's theory was found in the development of Teilhard de Chardin, who shared not only the idea abiogenesis(revival of matter), but also the idea that the end point of the development of the noosphere will be a merger with God. The development of the noospheric doctrine is associated primarily with the name of Vernadsky.

If the concepts of "living matter" and "biosphere" are accepted by science, then the concept of "noosphere" still causes controversy in scientific circles. Critics of the doctrine of the noosphere mainly point out that this doctrine is utopian and is not scientific, but religious and philosophical in nature. In particular, d.b.s. F. R. Shtilmark from the Institute of Ecology and Evolution Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences believes: “thoughts about the Noosphere as a Society of Reason ... are already deeply religious in their very essence and so far remain utopian.”

The American environmental historian D. Wiener calls the doctrine of the noosphere "a utopian and scientifically untenable idea."

Question #14

During the 20th century, the growth of the population in the world increased so much that the demographic problem turned into one of the most acute and difficult global problems - along with food, energy, raw materials, environmental, etc. In the last third of the 20th century, a unique situation developed: the population of the Earth doubled.

World population growth (in million people)
1800 952
1900 1,656
1950 2,557
1960 3,041
1970 3,708
1980 4,441
1990 5,274
2000 6,073
2007 6,605

Demographers predict that in 2050 the world population will approach 9.4 billion people, including 8.2 billion people in less developed regions and 1.2 billion people in developed regions. This means that in half a century the population of the world will increase by one and a half times.
Population growth depends on many factors: natural,
economic, social, cultural, religious, etc. This is a multifactorial process that is difficult to show in one article. Demographers believe that population growth goes through four or five historical stages. In the first stage - before industrialization and the industrial revolution - there was a high birth and death rate. In the second stage - after industrialization - the increase in the birth rate decreases as a result of the progress of technology, education and health care. In the third stage (in the second half of the 20th century), the increase in the birth rate decreases as a result of the use of contraceptives, urbanization, income growth and education. During this period, most women begin to be more attracted to an interesting job and career than having children. The fourth stage (post-industrial society) - characterized by low growth in fertility and mortality. Finally, in the fifth stage, the low birth rate does not exceed the loss from mortality and the population does not increase (as in Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, etc.). This is characteristic of society at the present stage of information technology.
The main driver of population growth at the end of the 20th century was the so-called "population explosion" in the less developed countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. From 1970 to 2007, the population in these regions almost doubled. At the end of the 70s, 75% of the world's population lived there, and in 2000 it was already 80%. (with up to half of the population being children under 15).

A good example in the implementation of population policy was China, where population growth did not exceed 0.6% per year in recent years, and its population in 2005 was 1.3 billion people. Birth control in India has led to a steady growth rate of 1.6% per annum and the population is approaching 1.1 billion. The population of China and India exceeds half of the population of all Asian countries, where two-thirds of the world's population lives. As a result of such a policy, China and India in the last years of the twentieth century, for the first time in modern history, managed to feed their population through their own agriculture (as a result of technological progress and increased land productivity).
Vast areas of chronic poverty, malnutrition and hunger still remain in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Moreover, the statistics of developing countries in this respect are inaccurate, so one can doubt that there are about 100 million hungry people there. Most likely this is the number of those who need emergency care, but an ambulance cannot solve the problems of age-old backwardness, archaic social relations, pre-capitalist and even tribal traditions in the village. It is likely that the number of hungry is three times higher, given the spread of poverty, overpopulation, chronic unemployment, etc.

In the countries of Western Europe, population growth has averaged over the past 15–20 years: 0.1% in Spain, 0.3% in Great Britain, 0.4% in France, etc. In a number of other countries of Western Europe, population growth rates remain close to those of the leading EEC countries. The rate of population growth has stabilized there for a long time and this does not raise questions. But a new phenomenon has emerged: zero population growth, when the birth rate barely covers the natural population decline. Thus, in the current decade, the population of Germany (82 million), Italy (58 million) and Poland (38.5 million) remains unchanged. In Japan, too, the population growth is zero, and the population is about 127 million people.
Against this background, the negative rates of population growth in 2000-2007 are striking. in Russia (-0.5%), Ukraine, as well as in a number of other former Soviet republics: Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, etc. This, apparently, is a direct result of the difficult and difficult living conditions after perestroika, privatization and the rupture of economic ties. Emigration from these countries also affected. Governments are taking measures to increase the birth rate, but so far there have been few results. Similar processes are observed in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, etc., where there are also negative population growth rates for 2000-2007. It can be hoped that the success of the market economy will lead to overcoming the negative demographic trends in these countries.

Question number 15

Based on the fact that the "natural" greenhouse effect is a well-established, balanced process, it is quite logical to assume that an increase in the concentration of "greenhouse" gases in the atmosphere should lead to an increase in the greenhouse effect, which in turn will lead to global warming. The amount of CO 2 in the atmosphere has been steadily increasing for more than a century due to the fact that various types of fossil fuels (coal and oil) have become widely used as an energy source. In addition, other greenhouse gases, such as methane, nitrous oxide and a range of chlorine-containing substances, are released into the atmosphere as a result of human activity. Although they are produced in smaller quantities, some of these gases are far more dangerous in terms of global warming than carbon dioxide.

Today, few scientists dealing with this problem dispute the fact that human activity leads to an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. According to the Intergovernmental Commission on Climate Change, “an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases will lead to a heating of the lower layers of the atmosphere and the surface of the earth ... Any change in the Earth’s ability to reflect and absorb heat, including those caused by an increase in the content of greenhouse gases and aerosols in the atmosphere, will lead to change in the temperature of the atmosphere and the world's oceans and disrupt stable patterns of circulation and weather."

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the average annual global temperature was above normal for several consecutive years. This raised fears that human-caused global warming had already begun. There is a consensus among scientists that over the past hundred years, the average annual global temperature has risen by 0.3 to 0.6 degrees Celsius. However, there is no agreement among them as to what exactly caused this phenomenon. It is difficult to say with certainty whether global warming is happening or not, since the observed increase in temperature is still within the limits of natural temperature fluctuations.

Uncertainty about global warming breeds skepticism about the looming danger. The problem is that when the hypothesis of anthropogenic factors of global warming is confirmed, it will be too late to do anything.

Science and life // Illustrations

One CD-ROM replaces countless folders.

A six-hour videoconference can save 99% of the energy and material resources that would be spent on transatlantic flights if the meeting were held in one place.

A group of specialists from General Motors has produced two prototypes of the Altralight four-seater hypercar. Its body is made of ultra-light carbon-fiber composite, aerodynamic properties are improved by 2-6 times, and economy is 2-2.5 times better.

TEA DRINKING AT THE ACADEMY

FACTOR FOUR

Is it possible to achieve a high quality of life with a careful attitude to natural resources? The search for an answer to this question was devoted to the next report to the Club of Rome, prepared in 1995 by world-renowned experts in the field of environmental protection E. Weizsäcker, E. Lovins and L. Lovins. The book "Four factor. Costs - half, returns - double" * (* Weizsacker E., Lovins E., Lovins L. Factor four. Costs - half, returns - double. New report to the Club of Rome. Translation by A. P. Zavarnitsyn and V. D. Novikov, edited by Academician G. A. Mesyats - M.: Academia, 2000. 400 pp.) is a revised version of this report. It provides 50 concrete examples of how, using the achievements of science, to achieve a doubling of wealth with a halving of resource consumption. Hence the title of the book.

Through the efforts of the Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician G. A. Mesyats, the book "Factor Four" came to Russia and was published in Russian translation. It was published by the publishing house "Academia" with the participation of the editors of the journal "Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences". In February of this year, Gennady Andreevich Mesyats presented a volume of the Russian edition of "Factor Four" that had just come out of the printing house to journalists who had gathered for the next "Tea Party at the Academy". (See "Science and Life" Nos. 1, 2, 1999; Nos. 1, 2, 4, 2000 for these regular meetings at the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences.) And we thought it would be best if readers become familiar with introductory articles: "Appeal to readers" by the editor of the translation of academician G. A. Mesyats and "Foreword to the Russian edition" by one of the authors of the book - the first vice-president and scientific director of the Rocky Mountain Institute (USA) Amory Block Lovins, which give a fairly complete picture about the ideas of sustainable human development in the 21st century outlined in "Factor Four". (Both articles are printed with slight cuts.)

FROM THE TRANSLATION EDITOR

Academician G. A. Month.

In 1968, a group of scientists and businessmen from different countries founded the Club of Rome, an international non-governmental organization that aimed to study global problems and ways to solve them. In 1972, the first report to the club was published - "The Limits to Growth" by Donella and Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers and W. V. Behrens. The report, which attracted the attention of politicians and scientists around the world, argued that the fate of mankind was threatened by uncontrolled population growth, the ruthless exploitation of natural resources and environmental pollution. Some have taken The Limits to Growth as a prediction of the imminent end of the world.

More than 30 years have passed since then. The authors of the first report corrected their computer model and published another report in 1992 - "Beyond: a global catastrophe or a sustainable future?". And recently, a new report to the Club of Rome, "Factor Four. Doubling Wealth, Doubling Resources" (in this edition, the subtitle of the report is translated differently: "Costs - half, returns - double"), which proposes some new solutions to old problems that await humanity on paths to sustainable development.

A few words about the authors of the book. Physicist and biologist, environmentalist and politician Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker- President of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy at the North Rhine-Westphalia Research Center, Germany. Formerly director of the Institute for European Environmental Policy in Bonn, in 1996 he became the first recipient of the Duke of Edinburgh's Gold Medal. Since 1998 he has been representing the city of Stuttgart in the German Bundestag.

Amory Block Lovins directs research and finance for the Rocky Mountain Institute, of which Hunter Lovins is president. They founded this not-for-profit resource policy center in 1982 in the Rocky Mountains (hence the Institute's name, which means "Rocky Mountains" in English), Colorado, USA. Amory Lovins is an experimental physicist educated at Harvard and Oxford. He has received an MA from Oxford, six honorary doctorates, and has published 26 books and several hundred articles.

L. Hunter Lovins- lawyer, sociologist, political scientist, forester and cowboy. She holds an honorary doctorate and has co-authored many books and articles with Amory Lovins. Awarded with him the Nissan, Mitchell and Alternative Nobel Prizes ...

Why am I, a physicist, interested in the ideas of Dr. E. Lovins and his colleagues? For more than 12 years, I was the chairman of the Ural Branch of the Academy of Sciences (first of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and then of the Russian Academy of Sciences). The Ural region of Russia is going through hard times. This is the land of ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, nuclear and defense industries, mechanical engineering, and mining enterprises. For hundreds of years, billions of tons of waste have accumulated on the surface of the Earth. In order to solve the environmental problems of the Urals, I participated in the creation of several institutes of the appropriate profile (Institute of Industrial Ecology, Institute of Ecology and Genetics of Microorganisms, Institute of Forest, Institute of the Steppe, etc.). It seemed self-evident that industry creates environmental problems, and scientists (biologists, chemists, physicians, physicists, etc.) think about how to solve them. However, it is equally important to think about how to change technologies in order to create fewer environmental problems. We need to move away from the mere cesspool role of scientists. In order for us to have a future, we need to radically improve technology, consume less energy, use natural resources efficiently. Factor Four offers solutions to these problems, so I asked Dr. E. Lovins for permission to translate the book into Russian, and he graciously agreed.

Are we living right? And how to live right? These are, in fact, the main questions that the authors of the book "Factor Four" are trying to answer. This is not about wars, terrorism, drug addiction and other similar global problems, but about the economy, technology, ecology, natural resources. And about the free market, which is especially important for us, since we are trying to build a market economy in Russia. Since the Industrial Revolution, progress has meant increased productivity. Factor Four offers a new approach to progress, focusing on increasing resource productivity. According to the authors, we can live twice as well and at the same time spend half as many resources, which is necessary for the sustainable development of mankind in the future. The solution is to use electricity, water, fuel, materials, fertile land, etc. more efficiently, often at no additional cost and even profitably. As "Factor Four" very convincingly shows, most of the technical solutions to our problems already exist and must be used right now.

At one time we talked a lot about energy-saving policy, the quintessence of which can be considered the well-known inscription on the walls of our institutions: "When leaving, turn off the light!". So the productive use of resources is not so new. The news is how many untapped opportunities exist. The authors give dozens of examples - from hypercars to videoconferencing, from new approaches in agriculture to economical models of refrigerators. At the same time, they not only give recommendations, sometimes quite simple, but also implement many of them in practice, as I had the opportunity to verify. The book is replete with practical examples of technologies that allow more efficient use of the world's resources. It can become a reference guide for those who want to understand how to put technology at the service of sustainable development and environmental protection. Unfortunately, in our daily life, we encounter dozens of counterexamples - from leaking taps through which whole seas of precious clean water flow, to heating mains in large cities that are shifted every three to four years, and their thermal insulation is such that in winter there is snow over them. melts.

The book explains how to organize markets and restructure the tax system in such a way that people's well-being can increase without increasing resource consumption.

For many developing countries, the efficiency revolution may offer the only real opportunity for prosperity in a relatively short period of time. But the new way of thinking is not acceptable to everyone, as the discussions at the World Environmental Forum in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 showed, to which many pages are devoted in the book.

One of the main barriers to more efficient use of resources is the contradictions between developed and developing countries. For the latter, saving resources and caring for nature often recede into the background before the immediate tasks of combating poverty, which they are trying to solve on the path of development along the Western model, alas, not without many mistakes. The events of recent years have pushed Russia out of the developed country camp it seemed to belong to, to a position behind even many developing countries, so we are probably destined for our share of misconceptions and mistakes in addition to those already made. But according to the fair statement of one of the authors, Dr. Amory Lovins, Russia has priceless wealth - these are its people, with their stamina and resourcefulness, inner strength and talent, talent and spiritual depth. I think that the book offered to the reader's attention can, to some extent, help us realize this enormous wealth.

FOREWORD TO THE RUSSIAN EDITION

Dr. Amory B. Lovins.

The book has already been translated into more than 10 languages, and I am especially pleased that, at the suggestion of Academician G. A. Mesyats, the Russian Academy of Sciences has made this book accessible to the Russian-speaking reader. I am grateful for the efforts made and hope that the content of the book will be consonant with the new thinking that has recently emerged in Russia. Of course, many of the details mentioned here have no analogues in Russian reality, but attentive readers will no doubt draw the appropriate conclusions and apply our experience in Russian conditions.

The part of the world you live in is of particular interest to me for several reasons. I studied at Harvard in the Russian department. I have some practical experience of trying to help Russian colleagues in saving energy. And finally, I am a descendant of four Ukrainian grandparents. So, I hope I will be forgiven for being bold if I offer some thoughts about why the Russians, I believe, can make a unique contribution to the realization of the ideas of this book, not only at home, but throughout the world.

Russia is an outstanding country. Its resilient and resourceful people have endured and overcome great adversity and achieved many successes that the world admires.

Today Russia is in trouble again. It is not easy to bear the burden of an exceptionally difficult thousand-year history. But any dangers, any difficulties are harbingers of new opportunities. And now Russia and the whole world have a single path that inspires great hopes. I mean not only the near future, but first of all a long-term strategy that will determine our common destinies. In this world strategy, Russia has a place of great and ever-increasing importance. Let me explain why.

The time in which we live poses a new challenge to all of us, and Russia, like never before, can use its unique resource, which will increasingly determine its special and significant role in global development. This resource is the inner strength and talent of Russians.

The unified world economy of the 21st century will be relatively less dependent on physical resources than before. Of course, Russia's mineral and land resources will not lose their significance. But in an economy that produces more and less physically, the most valuable will be what people have in their heads and souls. There is no need to conserve these human resources - like coal, timber or nickel. On the contrary, they must be used generously, generously, even wastefully, because they differ from physical resources in their inexhaustibility. The more you use them, the more they become.

In the emerging global information economy, which is largely based on human resources, Russia's advantage lies in priceless wealth - its people. Their natural gifts, enriched by history and one of the most thoughtful and effective systems of universal education, are a unique treasure. This treasure can serve as the basis of a new Russian economy - stable, comprehensive and deep, because it will rely not on oil, which can run out, not on steel, which can be eaten by rust, not on sturgeon, which can be caught by poachers, but on the most precious the capital more needed and more respected in the world - the capital that is confident, well-educated, gifted people with their age-old culture ...

Russia has previously cooperated with the West in various areas of mutual interest: space, environmental protection, international security. Many joint projects were successful, but they appeared from time to time. A systematic approach will bring much more tangible results to all of us. Strengthening the role of independent non-governmental organizations will help overcome the problems created in our countries by bureaucracy and political instability, which make joint action less effective than it could be. In addition, a careful choice of policies that ensure openness and honesty in the field of knowledge work will protect Russian innovations from piracy and bring them a fair reward. Some fruitful ideas for the practical implementation of a new approach to using the experience and ideas of Russian citizens to solve many global problems have already been proposed by the leaders of the Russian Academy of Sciences and members of the Russian government. They were also discussed with American leaders. We must move from these preliminary discussions to serious action.

All people and all nations have their tasks. All people and all nations discover in themselves the talent and determination to find answers to them. We have a lot to think about and do, relying on trust and mutual understanding, on the friendship and boundless patience of the Russian people. In their special talent lies the key to solving the world's problems.

This book attempts to suggest some of the practical steps needed to realize this enormous potential. Together, step by step, patiently and gradually, we can create a better world for ourselves and our children, the world of our hopes.

-- [ Page 1 ] --

Ernst von WEIZSACKER,

AmoryB.LOVINS,

L. Hunter LOVINS

FACTOR FOUR

Cost is half

return - double

New report to the Club of Rome

A. P. Zavarnitsyna and V. D. Novikov

edited by

Academician G. A. Months

Novikov, ed. Academician G. A. Months. M.: Academia, 2000. 400 p.

How to reconcile a high quality of life and careful attitude to natural resources? The next report to the Club of Rome (1995), the authors of which are world-famous experts in the field of environmental protection, is devoted to the search for an answer to this question. The book offered to the attention of readers is a revised version of the mentioned report. The main content of the book is devoted to substantiating the concept of "resource productivity", by which the authors understand the ability to live twice as well and at the same time spend half as much. Hence the title of the book.

The book is addressed to a wide range of readers.

ISBN 5-874444-098-BBK © Authors, © A. P. Zavarnitsyn, V. D. Novikov, © Academia Publishing House, Editorial In 1968, a group of scientists and businessmen from different countries founded the Club of Rome, an international non-governmental an organization that has set as its goal the study of global problems and ways to solve them. In 1972, the first report to the Club was published - "The Limits to Growth" by Donella and Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers and W.V.

Berens. The report, which attracted the attention of politicians and scientists around the world, argued that the fate of mankind was threatened by uncontrolled population growth, the ruthless exploitation of natural resources and environmental pollution. Some have taken The Limits to Growth as a prediction of the imminent end of the world.

Physicist and biologist, environmentalist and politician Ernst Ulrich von Weizsecker, President of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy at the North Rhine-Westphalia Science Center, Germany. Formerly Director of the Institute for European Environmental Policy in Bonn, in 1996 he became the first recipient of the Duke of Edinburgh's Gold Medal. Since 1998

represents the city of Stuttgart in the German Bundestag.

Amory Bloch Levins is the research and finance director of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), of which Hunter Lovins is president. They founded this non-profit resource policy center in 1982 in the Rocky Mountains (hence the Institute's name, which means "Rocky Mountains" in English), Colorado, USA. Amory Lovins is an experimental physicist educated at Harvard and Oxford. He has received an MA from Oxford, six honorary doctorates, and has published 26 books and several hundred articles.

L. Hunter Lovins is an attorney, sociologist, political scientist, forester, and cowboy. She holds an honorary doctorate and has co-authored many books and articles with Amory Lovins. She was awarded with him the Nissan, Mitchell and Alternative Nobel Prizes.

The main areas of their joint work are systems design, problems of the automotive industry, power industry and construction, integration of resource efficiency into a sustainable development strategy.

The goal of the Rocky Mountain Institute is to develop methods for the efficient use of resources. The Institute is independent of government, political parties, ideological or religious movements. About 50 of its employees conduct research and disseminate knowledge related to energy, transport, climate, water resources, agriculture, security, green building, economic development of various communities. The institute's budget is about three million dollars a year. Of this, 36-50% comes from consulting fees to private sector organizations and from the proceeds of the institute's commercial subsidiary, which is a source of technical and strategic information in the field of progressive and efficient energy use.

The rest of the budget is made up of tax-free donations and grants from foundations.

In this edition, the subtitle of the report is translated differently: "Costs - half, returns - double."

While in the US in February 1997, I visited the Rocky Mountain Institute where I met Dr. Amory Lovins. I was captivated by his idea of solving environmental problems and at the same time increasing the efficiency of natural resource consumption through improved technology. The breadth of Dr. Lovins' thinking is astounding. He is well aware that in order to achieve the goals set, it is necessary to solve many economic problems, and in some cases state regulation is necessary.

I was also struck by the building of the institute. It in itself is the subject of scientific research. Suffice it to say that only a few percent of the energy needed for similar buildings in the same area is used to heat it. The rest of the energy is obtained from the sun, although the winter is cold there - the temperature sometimes drops to C. This is provided by special glasses that transmit the sun's rays well and at the same time are good heat insulators. Thermal insulation of walls, doors, windows is made at the highest level using modern materials. Due to the low energy consumption, the payback period for these materials does not exceed one year.

Why am I, a physicist, interested in the ideas of Dr. E. Lovins and his colleagues? For more than a year I was the chairman of the Ural Branch of the Academy of Sciences (first of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and then of the Russian Academy of Sciences). The Ural region of Russia is going through hard times. This is the land of ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, nuclear and defense industries, mechanical engineering, and mining enterprises. For hundreds of years, billions of tons of waste have accumulated on the surface of the Earth.

In order to solve the environmental problems of the Urals, I participated in the creation of several institutes of the appropriate profile (Institute of Industrial Ecology, Institute of Ecology and Genetics of Microorganisms, Institute of Forest, Institute of the Steppe, etc.). It seemed self-evident that industry creates environmental problems, and scientists (biologists, chemists, physicians, physicists, etc.) think about how to solve them. However, it is equally important to think about how to change technologies in order to create fewer environmental problems.

We need to move away from the mere cesspool role of scientists. In order for us to have a future, we need to radically improve technology, consume less energy, use natural resources efficiently. Factor Four offers solutions to these problems, so I asked Dr. E. Lovins for permission to translate the book into Russian, and he graciously agreed.

Factor Four offers a new approach to progress, focusing on increasing resource productivity. According to the authors, we can live twice as well and at the same time spend half as many resources, which is necessary for the sustainable development of mankind in the future. The solution is to use electricity, water, fuel, materials, fertile land, etc. more efficiently, often at no additional cost and even profitably. As Factor Four very convincingly shows, most of the technical solutions to our problems already exist and must be used right now.

At one time we talked a lot about energy-saving policy, the quintessence of which can be considered the well-known inscription on the walls of our institutions: “When leaving, turn off the light!” So the productive use of resources is not so new. The news is how many untapped opportunities exist. The authors give dozens of examples - from hypercars to videoconferencing, from new approaches in agriculture to economical models of refrigerators. At the same time, they not only give recommendations, sometimes quite simple, but also implement many of them in practice, as I had the opportunity to verify. The book is replete with practical examples of technologies that allow more efficient use of the world's resources. It can become a reference guide for those who want to understand how to put technology at the service of sustainable development and environmental protection. Unfortunately, in our daily life, we encounter dozens of counterexamples - from leaking taps through which whole seas of precious clean water flow, to heating mains in large cities that are shifted every three to four years, and their thermal insulation is such that in winter there is snow over them. melts.

The book explains how to organize markets and restructure the tax system in such a way that people's well-being can increase without increasing resource consumption.

Academician G. A. MONTH This book, which tells about new ways to use resources much more efficiently for the sake of global security, health, justice and prosperity, made a strong impression in Western Europe and beyond. Since the book was first published in 1995, the Dutch and German governments, and later the European Community, have adopted the ideas it describes as the basis for sustainable development. The only opponents were the Swedes, who, unlike the OECD environment ministers, decided to increase the efficiency of resource use not by 4, but by 10 times. In fact, 10x savings can be cheaper and produce better results than 4x savings; in any case, the four is on the way to the ten, so let's not argue which number is better. Perhaps the number 20 that the United Nations Environment Program is aiming for is even better. But whatever the goal, the direction of movement is determined, and it's time to hit the road. Factor Four helps you set a goal, develop a strategy, and map out the first steps.

Russia is an outstanding country. Its resilient and resourceful people have endured and overcome great adversity and achieved many successes that the world admires.

On the contrary, they must be used generously, generously, even wastefully, because they differ from physical resources in their inexhaustibility. The more you use them, the more they become.

In the emerging global information economy, which is largely based on human resources, Russia's advantage lies in priceless wealth - its people. Their natural talent, enriched by history and one of the most thoughtful and effective systems of universal education, is a unique treasure. This treasure can serve as the basis of a new Russian economy - stable, comprehensive and deep, because it will rely not on oil, which can run out, not on steel, which can be eaten by rust, not on sturgeon, which can be caught by poachers, but on the most precious a capital more needed and more respected in the world - a capital that is confident, well-educated, gifted people with their age-old culture.

the compassion of doctors and the dedication of teachers; the spiritual depth of the great Russian soul - these and other precious resources of Russia constitute the capital that the world will cherish more and more and use more and more widely. And the world is ready to pay for this capital.

Thanks to the experience of Russian science and technology, combined with the capacities and specialists of its military-industrial complex, many acute environmental problems (in Russia itself, in Eastern Europe, in China - everywhere, including both American continents) can be solved on the way to a safer life. , healthy childhood, prosperous economy. First-class Russian programmers are able to contribute to the solution of technical problems associated with the so-called "computer error of the year 2000". Russian teachers will help their American colleagues develop new approaches to serious problems in my country's schools. Russia's unsurpassed experts in combating terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction will work with their foreign partners to make the world a safer place for our children and to prevent a global catastrophe. And finally, the restructuring of the world economy, the more productive use of energy, water and materials is another large-scale task that will require Russian hands and Russian minds.

Russia has previously cooperated with the West in various areas of mutual interest: space, environmental protection, international security.

Many joint projects were successful, but they appeared from time to time.

A systematic approach will bring much more tangible results to all of us. Strengthening the role of independent non-governmental organizations will help overcome the problems created in our countries by bureaucracy and political instability, which make joint action less effective than it could be. In addition, a careful choice of policies that ensure openness and honesty in the field of knowledge work will protect Russian innovations from piracy and bring them a fair reward. Some fruitful ideas for the practical implementation of a new approach to using the experience and ideas of Russian citizens to solve many global problems have already been proposed by the leaders of the Russian Academy of Sciences and members of the Russian government. They were also discussed with American leaders. We must move from these preliminary discussions to serious action.

Snowmass, CO 81654, USA Senior Vice President and Fellow of the Rocky Mountain Institute Factor four is the right idea at the right time, which should be a symbol of progress, a result that the Club of Rome would welcome. Doubling wealth while doubling the consumption of resources is the essence of the goal posed in The First Global Revolution (King and Schneider, 1991), the very first report of the Club of Rome.

If we fail to double our wealth, how can we ever hope to solve the problems of poverty to which Bertrand Schneider (1994) draws attention in Scandal and Shame? And how to deal with the difficult problem of controllability that Jezechel Dror addresses in his recent report?

On the other hand, how can we ever return to ecological balance on Earth if we cannot halve our resource consumption? The halving of resource consumption truly means "Respect for Nature", as the latest report of Woeter van Dieren to the Club is called. Halving resource consumption is closely related to the complex issue of sustainable development that dominated the World Environmental Forum in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. But remember that this goal was set 20 years earlier in the famous report to the Club of Rome "The Limits to Growth"

Donella and Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers and Bill Behrens (Meadows et al., 1972).

Thus, the doubling of wealth and the doubling of resources indicate the scale of the global problem, which the Club of Rome considers to be the core of its activities. We are proud to be able to present Factor Four as a new hopeful report to the Club, outlining some of the steps humanity needs to take. "Factor Four" can contribute to solving the problems raised by the Club in the "First Global Revolution". We would like to acknowledge with gratitude the contribution of two pioneers in the field of energy efficiency, Amory and Hunter Lovins, involved in this work by our member Ernst von Weizsäcker, who initiated the making of Factor Four another report to the Club. The authors were able to collect 50 impressive examples of quadrupling the productivity of resources and thereby demonstrate the wide possibilities of the ideas outlined in the Factor Four report.

Each report to the Club of Rome sums up the results of comprehensive research and discussion by Club members and other leading experts. In the case of Factor Four

the results were summed up at an international conference of the Club of Rome, organized with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, in Bonn in March 1995. The conference gave all interested members of the Club the opportunity to provide information for the forthcoming report, the draft of which was circulated in advance. The Executive Committee of the Club of Rome decided in June 1995 to accept the revised manuscript as a report to the Club.

On behalf of the Club of Rome, I express my sincere hope that this new report will contribute to an international discussion involving both politicians and experts.

Madrid, December 1996

This is an ambitious book that aims to change the direction of technological progress. A persistent increase in labor productivity is a rather dubious program now that more than 800 million people are out of work. At the same time, scarce natural resources are being squandered. If resource productivity were quadrupled, humanity could double its wealth while halving the burden on the natural environment. We believe we can prove the technical feasibility of quadrupling the productivity of resources and with it the macroeconomic benefits that would make individuals, firms, and society as a whole richer.

Factor Four, in our opinion, can bring the Earth back into balance (to use a metaphor from Al Gore's compelling bestseller [Gore, 1992]).

We would like to thank the Club of Rome for their continued interest in our project.

To discuss the manuscript of the book, a special seminar of the Club of Rome was organized in Bonn in March 1995, sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the German Environmental Protection Fund. As a result, most of the text was rewritten and sent to the members of the Executive Committee of the Club, which in June 1995 accepted the book as a report to the Club. The President of the Club of Rome has done us the great honor of writing the preface to this edition.

Initially, the manuscript was written in various versions of the English language.

Half of the text was written by an author whose native language is German, the other half by two Americans who lived respectively 2 and 14 years in England, but hardly managed to reach the level of William Shakespeare. For (first publication, the entire book was translated into German and presented in September 1995 under the title "Faktor Vier: Doppelter Wohlstand - Halbierter Naturverbrauch" by Dremer-Knaur, Munich. (The subtitle in free translation may sound like "Live twice as good eat half as much” or, more accurately, as on the title page of this book.) The book became a bestseller almost immediately and remained so for more than six months.

Agreement was granted for translations into Spanish, Swedish, Czech, Italian, Korean and Japanese, and requests were received for other languages. All over the world, there was a rapid increase in interest from the industrial community. The authors have received hundreds of letters of approval, many of which provide new practical examples of the Factor Four principles. What's more, two of us, Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, collaborated with Paul Hocken on a highly acclaimed book for the US rather than Europe, and primarily for the business community.* .

Kranendonk, Hans Kretschmer, Martin Lies, André Lehmann, Harry Lehmann, Christa Liedke, Jochen Luhmann, Manfred Max-Neef (Valdivia), Mark Merritt, Niels Meyer, Timothy Moore, Ki-kujiro Namba (Tokyo), Hermann Ott, Andreas Pastowski , Rudolf Petersen, Richard Pinkham, Wendy Pratt, Josef Romm, Jen Seal, Wolfgang Sachs, Karl-Otto Schallabeck, Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek, Harald Schumann, Eberhard Seifert, Farley Sheldon, Bill Scheiermann, Walter Stael, Klaus Steilmann, Ursula Tischner, Reinhard Uberhorst, Karl Christian von Weizsäcker, Christine von Weizsäcker, Franz von Weizsäcker, Anders Weikmann and Heinrich Wohlmeyer.

We also thank the sponsors of the Bonn meeting and the government of North Rhine-Westphalia for a substantial grant to the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy at the North Rhine Wuppertal Science Centre, with the task of researching and putting into practice the principles of this book.

Much of the credit goes to Earthscan Publications in London, which did an excellent job of publishing the book and facilitating its distribution. We are especially grateful to Jonathan Sinclair Wilson and Rowan Davies.

January 1997 GDP - Gross Domestic Product, GDP WMO - World Meteorological Organization - World Meteorological Organization, WMO GNP - Gross National Product - Gross National Product, GNP WTO - World Trade Organization - World Trade Organization, WTO GATT - General General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, GATT GDS - Duales System Deutschland, DSD ISEW - Index ofSustainable Economic Welfare, ISEW KOCP - United Nations Conference on Environment and Development - United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, UNCED CAFE - Corporate Average Fuel Economy, CAFE IMF - International Monetary Fund - International Monetary Fund, IMF IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC MKHP - International Conference by population and development International Conference on Population and Development, ICPD MCK - Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, INC MCHC - International Council of Scientific Unions, ICSU ICC - International Chamber of Commerce- International Chamber of Commerce, ICC OPEC - Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC OECD - Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development - Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD UNFCCC - Framework Convention on Climate Change Change, FCCC SMOG - Alliance of Small Island States, AOSIS FNE - New Economics Foundation, NEF HWRM - Chlorinated Hydrocarbon (CHC) Solvents ENR - Ecological Tax Reform, ETR ACT2 - Advanced Customer Technology Test for Maximum Energy Efficiency CAFE - Corporate Average Fuel Economy - ISEW - Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare - MIPS Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare - Material Inputs Per Service Unit - Material inputs per service unit NAFTA - North American Free Trade Agreement - North American Free Trade Agreement PCSD - President's Council for Sustainable Development - PG&E Presidential Council for Sustainable Development - Pacific Gas and Electric Company - Pacific Gas and Electric Company RMI - Rocky Mountain Institute - Rocky Mountain Institute UNCED - United Nations Conference on Environment and Development - United Nations Conference on Environment and Development UNDP - United Nations Development Program - United Nations Development Program UNEP - United Nations Environment Program - UN Environment Program WCED - World Commission for Environment and Development - World Commission on Environment and Development WRAP - Waste Reduction Always Pays - Waste reduction always pays off.

In a few words, "factor four" means that resource productivity can and should quadruple. The wealth extracted from one unit of natural resources can quadruple. Thus, we can live twice as well and at the same time spend half as much.

This idea is both new and simple.

It is new because it heralds nothing more than a new direction of scientific and technological progress. In the past, progress has been about increasing productivity. We believe that resource performance is just as important and should be treated as a top priority.

Our idea is simple, and we propose an approximate quantitative formula for it. This book describes technologies that can quadruple resource performance or more. Progress, as we know at least since the World Environmental Congress in Rio de Janeiro, must meet the criterion of sustainable development. "Factor Four" provides this.

The idea is also exciting. Some aspects of this revolution in efficiency are already being realized at lower costs, ie. can be used to advantage. Countries that revolutionize efficiency win in international competition.

This applies not only to the developed countries of the North. This is especially true for China, India, Mexico or Egypt - countries that have an abundance of cheap labor but lack energy. Why should they learn from the US and Europe how to waste energy and materials? Their path to prosperity will be smoother, faster and safer if they make the efficiency revolution the cornerstone of technological progress.

The revolutionary rise in efficiency is sure to become a global trend.

As is always the case with new opportunities, who paves the way in a new direction reaps the greatest harvest.

The book cannot change the direction of progress. This must be done by people - consumers and voters, leaders and engineers, politicians and journalists. People don't change their habits unless there is good reason to do so. A critical mass of people must feel an overwhelming need, otherwise there will not be enough momentum to change the course of our civilization.

The reasons for changing the direction of scientific and technological progress are both moral and material. We believe that the majority of readers share our opinion: the preservation of physical life support systems is one of the highest moral priorities for humanity. The ecological state of the world requires urgent action. We will discuss this in the third part of the book. We shy away from talking about doom and gloom, but some environmental facts and trends are indeed very disturbing. They should be quantified. We will show that there is a fourfold gap between what can be and what should be ahead of us, and this gap must be overcome (see Fig. 1).

Otherwise, the world may face unprecedented disasters and catastrophes.

Is it possible to cross such a gigantic abyss at all? You can, thanks to Factor Four.

The countries that start first will benefit the most. Countries that hesitate are likely to suffer huge losses in their capital, which will be quickly depleted away from the main routes of resource efficiency.

Treating the Disease of Waste with Efficiency Why do we believe this? Mainly because we see our society in the arms of a serious but curable disease. It is not much different from the malady our grandparents called "consumption"*, as it caused its victims to wither**.

Today's economic tuberculosis does not deplete our bodies or our resources (waste energy and resources remain useless environmental pollutants), but its impact on people and the planet is just as detrimental, costly and contagious.

We were told that industrialization is the result of increasing levels of efficiency and productivity. The productivity of human labor has, of course, increased many times over since the beginning of the industrial revolution. We have increased our production capacity by replacing human labor with machines.

However, this change has gone too far. We over-consume resources such as energy, raw materials, water, soil and air. The gain in "productivity" achieved in this way destroys living systems that not only provide us with basic resources, but must also absorb the waste of our civilization.

A popular argument in the current controversy is that any solution to environmental problems will be quite costly. The revolution in resource efficiency discussed in this book makes this argument fallacious. Increasing Resource Efficiency and Healing the Waste Disease

really open up great economic opportunities. Such treatment causes almost no pain and has a calming effect on both natural systems and the social structure of world civilization.

When people think of waste, they think of their household waste, car exhaust, and dumpsters near businesses and construction sites.

If you ask how much material is wasted every year, most people will find this amount not too much. In reality, we waste resources more than ten times more than we use them. A study commissioned by the US National Academy of Engineering found that approximately 93% of the materials we buy and “spend” never materialize into products that meet market demands. Moreover, 80% of goods are thrown away after a single use, and a significant part of the rest of the products do not serve the entire prescribed period. Reformist economist Paul Hawken estimates that 99% of the raw materials used in the manufacture of goods in the United States, or contained in these goods, become waste six weeks after they are sold.

Much of energy, water and transport services are also often lost before we get them; we pay for them, and they do not bring any benefit. Heat dissipated through the attic floors of houses with poor insulation; energy from a nuclear or coal-fired power plant, only 3% of which is converted into light in incandescent lamps (70% of the energy in the original fuel is lost before it reaches the lamp, which in turn converts only 10% of the electricity into light); 80-85% of automotive fuel that is lost in the engine and drive system before it sets the wheels in motion; water that evaporates or flows out drop by drop before reaching the roots of plants; the senseless movement of goods over vast distances for the sake of a result that can just as well be obtained locally - all these are useless expenses.

Such losses are unreasonably high. The average American, for example, pays almost $2,000** a year for energy, either purchased directly for the family or embodied in manufactured goods and services. Add to this the waste of metal, soil, water, wood, fiber, and the cost of transporting them all. Play on words: consumption translates simultaneously as "consumption" and as "consumption." - Approx. transl.

A play on words: waste away simultaneously means "waste" and "waste". - Approx. transl.

of these materials, and we will see that the average American loses thousands of dollars every year.

These losses, multiplied by 250 million people, add up to at least a trillion dollars a year wasted. On a global scale, the amount of losses can reach 10 trillion dollars a year. Such losses impoverish families (especially the poor), reduce competition, jeopardize resource supplies, poison water, air, soil and people, generate unemployment, and stifle economic viability.

And yet the disease of waste is curable. Healing comes from laboratories, from workstations and production lines created by skilled scientists and technologists, from the skillful design of cities by planners and architects, from the ingenuity of engineers, chemists and farmers, and from the intelligence of each person. Healing is based on advanced science, sound economics, and common sense. The cure is to use resources efficiently, achieve more with less. This will not be a retreat or a "return" to the old means. This is the beginning of a new industrial revolution in which we will achieve a dramatic increase in the productivity of resources.

Over the past few years, the number of paths to success has increased significantly. Completely unexpected opportunities for entrepreneurship and for society have opened up. This book introduces new opportunities for efficient use of resources, describes them and calls for action. Shown here are practical, profitable ways to use resources at least four times more efficiently than we do now. In other words, we can do everything we do today just as well, or even better, with only one quarter of the energy and materials that are currently in use. This would make it possible, for example, to double the standard of living on Earth, while halving the consumption of resources. Reality is becoming clearer and economic efficiency other, even more ambitious and large-scale projects.

Doing more with less is not the same as doing less, doing worse, or doing nothing. Efficiency does not mean cutting back, inconveniencing, or depriving something. When several US Presidents proclaimed:

“Saving energy means hotter in summer and colder in winter,” they overlooked the efficient use of energy, which would give us more comfort in better buildings for less energy or money. To avoid this widespread confusion, we refrain from using the ambiguous term "resource conservation" in this book and replace it with the terms "resource efficiency" or "resource productivity".

Seven Arguments for Efficient Use The moral and material reasons we have given for moving toward efficiency may seem somewhat abstract. Now we will be more specific, pointing out seven reasons for doing just that.

Live better. Efficient use of resources improves the quality of life. We can see better with efficient lighting systems, keep food fresher longer in efficient refrigerators, produce better products in efficient factories, travel more safely and comfortably in efficient vehicles, to feel better in efficient buildings and to eat more fully efficiently grown agricultural products.

Less polluting and depleting. Everything has to go somewhere. Waste resources pollute the air, water or land. Efficiency fights waste and therefore reduces pollution, which is essentially the diversion of resources. Efficient use of resources can make a significant contribution to solving problems such as acid rain and climate change, deforestation, loss of soil fertility and crowding in the streets. Efficient use of energy plus productive, sustainable agriculture and forestry alone could eliminate up to 90% of today's environmental problems, not at a cost, but - under favorable conditions - at a profit. Efficiency can free up a lot of time, and during this time we will learn how to solve the world's problems thoughtfully, intelligently and consistently.

Get profit. Efficient use of resources usually brings benefits:

you don't have to pay for resources now, and because they don't turn into pollutants, you don't have to pay to clean them up later.

Market forces can theoretically drive the efficiency of resources. However, we still have a significant task ahead of us in removing the obstacles and reversing the reckless aspirations that keep the market from working at its full potential.

If a country buys equipment to produce very energy efficient lamps or windows, it can provide energy for as little as one-tenth of what it would take to build more power plants. These investments pay off at least three times faster, and by re-investing capital in other industries, the volume of services provided by the invested capital can be increased by more than 30 times. (According to some estimates, the savings could be even higher). For many developing countries, this is the only realistic way to achieve relatively rapid prosperity.

Efficiency can reduce the number of international conflicts over oil, cobalt, forests, water - everything that someone has and someone else wants to have.

(Some countries pay the price of military spending, as well as directly for their dependence on resources: one sixth to a quarter of the US military budget is allocated to forces whose main task is to gain or maintain access to foreign resources.) Energy conservation can even indirectly prevent nuclear proliferation. weapons through the use of cheaper and militarily safer energy sources instead of nuclear power plants and related dual-use materials, skills and technologies.

Be fair and have more jobs. The waste of resources is the flip side of a warped economy that splits society into those who have jobs and those who don't. If human energy and talent do not find their proper application, this is a tragedy. And yet the main reason for the waste of human resources is the erroneous and wasteful way of scientific and technological progress. We are making fewer people "productive" by consuming more resources and effectively marginalizing one-third of the world's workforce. We need a sound economic stimulus that will solve two pressing problems at once: create employment for more people and save resources. Enterprises should get rid of unproductive kilowatt-hours, tons and liters, and not their employees. This would happen much faster if we reduced the taxation of labor and increased taxes on the use of resources accordingly.

This book contains a set of tools for modern resource efficiency. Here are fifty examples of at least a fourfold increase in resource efficiency. In these examples, you will be able to get acquainted with the available methods, learn how they work, what they are capable of and how to put them to good use in practice. Each of us - at work, at home or school, in the private, public or non-profit sector, in interactions with others or in our personal lives - can pick up these tools and take action.

Efficiency is a concept as old as the human race. The progress of mankind in all societies was determined primarily by new methods that make it possible to do more with less effort, to use all types of resources more productively. But over the past 150 years, much of the technological effort has been focused on increasing labor productivity, even if it requires a lot of natural resources. Recently, there has been a conceptual and practical revolution in the efficient use of resources, but most people have not yet heard about its new potential.

Since the oil crisis of the 1970s, every five years we have learned how to use electricity about twice as efficiently as before. Each time, this doubled efficiency theoretically cost two-thirds less. Similar progress is being made today through new technologies and especially through understanding how to select and combine existing technologies. Thus, the progress in increasing the return of resources while reducing costs is enormous. They can be compared to the revolution in computers and consumer electronics, where everything is constantly getting smaller, faster, better and cheaper. However, energy and material resource experts have not yet begun to think in terms of ever-increasing energy efficiency. It appears that the conversations in official energy policymakers are still focused on how much coal should be replaced by nuclear power and at what cost, i.e. energy production. Meanwhile, the revolution in energy consumption makes this reasoning obsolete and irrelevant.

There is a widespread preconception that saving more energy always costs more. It is generally assumed that beyond the known zone of “diminishing profits” there is a wall beyond which further savings will be prohibitively expensive. In the past, this has been true for both resource conservation and pollution control, and fits perfectly into mainstream economics.

However, today there are not only new technologies, but also new ways to tie them together, so that large energy savings can often be achieved at less cost than small savings. When a series of interconnected efficient technologies is implemented - in the proper sequence, in the right way and in the right proportions (like the staged preparation of food according to a good recipe), a new single process that promises economic benefits emerges from separate technological details.

This is strikingly contrary to worldly wisdom, according to which "you get what you pay for" - the more expensive the better. Building a slightly more efficient car costs more than a normal car, while building a super efficient car costs less than a normal car - how can that be? There are five main reasons for this. These are discussed in the detailed examples of energy efficiency in the first chapter.

The ideas presented here are not too complicated, but rather unusual. So far, few people understand them, and even fewer apply them. The traditional way things are done seems to hold the practice in a vice. In addition, most architects and engineers are paid based on how much they spend, not how much they save. Therefore, the savings may lower their income, so that they have to work harder for less wages, which are directly or indirectly determined by a fixed percentage of the project cost.

Even with the right intentions, it's not easy to apply these new resource-saving ideas. Achieving significant savings by cheaper means than small ones does not require gradualness, but decisive "leaps". What good is a frog that has grown wiser and learned to jump, but continues to sit in the same old pond? Resource productivity requires integration, not reductionism - you need to think of design as a whole, not as a mass of dissected small parts. In other words, productivity is contrary to the trend of the current century towards narrow specialization and disintegration, it requires optimization, and not approximate reasoning on the fingers. It requires a new approach to the training of designers and design practice. Routine systems that waste resources are difficult to design because they are complex; however, effective systems are not easier to create, although they are extremely simple, as shown in the examples in chapters 1-3.

These barriers, mostly due to misunderstanding, are just the tip of a very large iceberg of hidden problems. In trying to conserve resources, we face a daunting array of practical barriers that actively prevent people and businesses from choosing the best buys in the first place. These obstacles include the following:

the traditional education of nearly all those dealing with natural resources; and the often insurmountable cost of replacing ordinary personnel with those who know more. This "human factor" may indeed be the biggest hurdle and account for the bulk of what economists call "operating costs"; the cost of overcoming inertia and changing the usual state of affairs;

other costs associated with the huge interest of some capital owners in maintaining existing structures, as well as the inertia of consumers who may simply not be aware of the resource efficiency that should be demanded;

discriminatory financial criteria that often place a much higher barrier to efficiency than to resource production (for example, the requirement that an energy saving measure must pay back the investment in a year or two is quite common, while power plants are given 10-20 years for this);

the difference in incentives between the person who could buy efficiency and those who would then take advantage of it (for example, house owners and tenants of apartments, or builders of houses and equipment and their buyers);

prices that do not adequately or incorrectly reflect the actual costs to society, not to mention the costs to environmental protection and costs to future generations;

greater ease and convenience in organizing and financing one large project instead of many small ones;

outdated regulations that hinder or outlaw the adoption of efficiency - from prohibiting charter taxi drivers from picking up anyone on their way back to allowing manufacturers' trucks to carry only their own products, limiting the area of windows in buildings even when their increased area saves energy, preferential freight rates that give raw materials an advantage over materials that are returned to circulation.

the almost universal practice of regulating the activities of public utilities supplying electricity, gas, water, etc., where they are rewarded for increasing consumption, and sometimes even penalized for increasing resource efficiency (an unfortunate side effect of the restructuring of the British energy system).

All of these obstacles can be overcome with constant and close attention to the problems described in chapters 4-7. It is necessary to stimulate the saving of resources, not their waste; implement procedures to select the best product before buying it. We need competition to conserve resources, not to squander them. None of these transformations will be quick or easy; but failure to implement them dooms us to the solution of much more difficult problems.

The problem of human resources mentioned above can actually be overcome more easily than we first thought. In countries such as China, Russia, India and Brazil, there is a remarkable intellectual potential of more than two billion people who were previously excluded from the decision-making process - the same was true for a long time in relation to most women in the North and in West. The use of the mentioned potential could lead to impressive success. Although it is not yet clear how to do this, some of the examples below (such as Fans, Pumps and Motors, Chapter 1, and Curitiba Skytrain, Chapter 3) show that the benefits for the whole world could be enormous.

While improving the efficiency of resource use is not easy, it is increasingly being applied in practice. In the mid-1970s, for example, the controversy in American engineering economics focused on whether low-cost energy savings could add up to about 10% or 30% of total consumption. In the mid 80s the discussions were around the range of 50 to 80%, and in the mid 90s professionals are debating whether the opportunity potential is closer to 90 or 99%, which will save 10-100 times. As our analysis of 50 case studies shows, such savings are already being achieved by a number of competent people. And as the economist Kenneth Boulding put it, “everything that exists is possible.”

Despite the exciting possibilities for a revolutionary increase in efficiency, we must not forget the potential for undesirable consequences. More efficient vehicles can be driven for longer periods of time, allowing for a much larger fleet. Saving water can lead to further desert sprawl. In general, resource efficiency can contribute to significant population growth over an extended period of time. Thus, rapid economic growth through conservation of resources can negate the gains achieved, if development is not directed in a different direction. In chapters 12-14, we return to the topic of how to rein in the economy of resources, turning it from a tool for doing things that should not be done at all, into a tool for achieving humane and worthy goals that meet global needs.

Moreover, we must be sober about the widespread incentive structure that drives investment capital, which always favors the highest return on investment for the corresponding risk. And we may find that even highly profitable investments in efficiency will not necessarily be competitive in the capital markets with traditional investments in, say, mining in Indonesia or Zaire or in Chinese industrialization.

Despite all these obstacles and problems, we certainly do not see everything in a gloomy light. Market conditions and the public can be influenced.

Well-informed consumers can speak out in favor of efficiency and demand that product labels report the use of resources in production and sale. For an efficiency revolution, capital owners and democratic majorities must have the right to request full information and enjoy a level playing field. Chapters 4-7 highlight some of our strategic ideas in this direction.

Finally, Part IV deals with a more intelligent civilization in a language far beyond technology and quantitative goals. Our economic policy must inevitably overcome misleading indicators such as GDP (gross domestic product), which reflects the turnover of goods and services, not wealth.

The informal sector, still vital and essential in many developing countries, deserves to be rediscovered by our economists. Simplistic views of the benefits of free trade will also need to be deeply reconsidered.

Twenty Examples of Revolutionary Transformations in People are accustomed to talking about "energy conservation." The expression "energy saving"

has a moralistic connotation. The father usually urges his children to turn off the lights when they leave the room, and never leave electrical appliances running unnecessarily. After all, extravagance not only costs money, but has always been considered a sin. When the need for environmental protection was realized, the reaction from governments and electricity providers was not very ingenious: you (the overdemanding people) can get as much environmental protection as you want if you are willing to drastically reduce your demands. The simplistic notion of conserving energy through voluntary self-restraint has allowed leaders to avoid creatively addressing the issue of energy.

In recent years, a new expression has appeared: rational use energy." The use of this term enhances the reputation of the speaker: it is assumed that he is competent in energy matters. Therefore, although we do not dare to reject this term, it does not suit us. It sounds so bureaucratic and complicated and defensive. It does not bring any joy and is incomprehensible when it comes to the relationship between energy use and technological progress. This book is about technological progress.

Or rather about the reorientation of technological progress. We prefer to talk about "energy performance".

By itself, and depending on the conditions you are in, the term "productivity" can have a positive or negative connotation. This confusion of meanings is a disservice to economists, who have narrowed the term to the point where it only means labor productivity. In the past, productivity meant prosperity; today it is inevitably linked to the threat of unemployment.

On the other hand, energy performance is something that everyone can welcome with joy. Virtually no one will lose from it.

This chapter is about quadrupling energy productivity.

The expressions "energy conservation" or "energy efficiency" are simply not enough to convey the appropriate sense of a cheerful attack on the widespread technological dinosaurs. The concept of "energy productivity" is more appropriate for the task.

At first glance, it might seem that by using the “factor four” as a benchmark, we exclude a significant part of the production: aluminum smelting, taking into account the laws of thermodynamics, cannot be made four times more energy efficient. The same is true for the production of chlorine, cement, glass and some other raw materials. But we don't have to give up the "factor four" potential that these materials have. Aluminum and glass are highly recyclable and such recycling would save much of the energy needed to produce them from raw materials. For some end uses, a number of materials can be replaced by others without any impact on the manufacturing sector, or the materials can be used more appropriately.

Therefore, most applications of metals or glass, over the entire lifetime, should provide a fourfold increase in energy performance.

In this book, however, we will focus on examples with the direct potential to increase energy efficiency by more than four times. Let's start with an example of enormous importance for the global energy balance.

1.1. Hypercars: Across the US on a single fuel tank* From 1973 to 1986, the average new passenger car produced in the US the car has become twice as economical - from 17.8 to 8.7 liters of gasoline per 100 km. About 4% savings were obtained due to the manufacture of passenger cars with a reduced interior size, 96% - due to lighter and improved design; by simply cutting out obviously excessive weight, 36% was saved. Since then, however, fuel efficiency has improved by only about 10%. In mid-1991, car manufacturers claimed that by the end of this century, without excessive costs or deterioration specifications some 5-10% will still be real.

Can we achieve better results?

The modesty of this statement seems strange for two reasons. First, many of the improvements in mass-produced and well-selling passenger cars are not always implemented. It has been found that the full implementation of just 17 of these improvements would save another 35% of the fuel consumption of, say, an average new car manufactured in 1987, without any change in its size, ride or throttle response. Among them were such well-known solutions as front-wheel drive, four valves per cylinder, an overhead camshaft and a five-speed gearbox. This list doesn't even include some obvious improvements, such as pulling back the brake calipers (as in motorcycle brakes) so that the pads don't press against the disc and stop the car when the rider tries to make it move. This improvement to 5.36 liters per 100 kilometers would cost only 14 cents per liter saved - less than half of the lowest price of gasoline in America today, where it is cheaper than bottled water.

While car manufacturers doubted these data, Honda confirmed them with the release in 1992 of the Subcompact VX model, which gave even greater savings - 56%, i.e.

4.62 liters per 1-00 km, and at an even lower cost (the biggest savings were already cents per liter). This car was 16% more fuel efficient than the 2006 US National Research Council predicted (after its inception!) small car.

If such a delay in the forecast from real events was perceived as a temporary bias, then the second argument in favor of believing that we can do better was simply obvious. Everything that exists is possible. In the mid-80s, car manufacturers created a dozen new models that combined fairly traditional terms and gave double or triple fuel economy. These four- to five-seat passenger cars consumed 1.7-3.5 liters per km with improved safety, emissions and driving performance. Mass production of at least two models - Volvo and Peugeot - would cost as much as the production of today's cars. However, the United States ignored this circumstance, believing that the models mentioned did not meet American standards, since they were developed in Europe or Japan.

By mid-1991, a much more radical concept had taken shape at the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI). Why not redesign the car? Why not revisit it, starting with the wheels, to radically simplify it?

Einstein said that “everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simplified.”

Cars have gradually become impossibly frilly, with a heaping up of one. The work summarized in this paragraph is described in numerous articles, from popular to special technical ones, available from the Rocky Mountain Institute's Hypercar Center. A current list of these and other RMI publications, as well as the full text of some of them, can be found on the institute's WWW server, http://www.rmi.org; specific inquiries can be directed to e-mail: [email protected]

“bells and whistles” on the other, in an attempt to solve problems that can be eliminated primarily through improved design.

The new study of the automobile as a physical system led to a startling conclusion: the engineers at Detroit, Wolfsburg, Cowley, and Osaka became so narrow-minded that they knew almost everything about almost nothing; it is unlikely that any of them could independently design a car entirely. The relationship between the elements of the structure, which was of fundamental importance, was lost. The designers thought too much about small details and too little about the car as a system. Industry, in its scrupulous attention to detail, has lost sight of the technique of creating a complete system - a technique that is extremely simple and that is why it is very difficult.

In fact, the automotive industry, over decades of dedicated effort, has designed the car, so to speak, backwards. Approximately 80-85% of the fuel's energy is lost before it reaches the wheels, and ultimately only about 1% of the energy is used for propulsion. Why? Yes, because the car was made of heavy steel, and in order to disperse such a colossus, such a large engine was required that most of the time it worked almost idly. Such a tiny fraction of its power was used that the efficiency of the engine was halved. Manufacturers began to introduce additional complications in order to squeeze out a little more efficiency. from the engine and transmission (cardan gear). Impressive progress has been made and continues to be made, but the savings are small and the effort involved is enormous.

But let's look at the car from the other side. What happens to the 15-20% of fuel energy that actually manages to "get" to the wheels? When driving on a flat road in urban conditions, about a third goes to heat the air, the resistance of which the car overcomes (this value rises to 60-70% on expressways), a third heats the tires and the road and a third - the brakes. Each unit of energy saved by overcoming these fatal shortcomings would in turn save about five to seven units of fuel energy that would not have to be supplied to the engine in order for it to get to the wheels! So, instead of focusing on eliminating one-tenth of a percent of driveline losses, designers should prioritize energy savings by building a fundamentally more fuel-efficient vehicle.

Ultra-Light Strategy The use of ultra-strong yet crash-resistant impact-absorbing materials (mostly advanced composites) has helped make a four- or five-passenger car three times lighter. It weighs only 473 kg.

The improved design increased the aerodynamic properties of its streamlined profile by 2-6 times. Better quality tires with less car weight reduced rubber wear by 3-5 times. The car was designed not as a tank, but rather as an aircraft.

The "ultra-light" strategy has already been put into practice. At the end of 1991 General Motors

presented its development of an ultra-light four-seater car "Altralight" made of carbon fiber composite. The model is economical, safe, distinguished by excellent comfort, elegance of finish, as well as high sports performance (acceleration from 0 to 100 kilometers per hour in 8 seconds), which can be compared with the acceleration of a twelve-cylinder BMW, but with less than that of a Honda Civic. engine (111hp). In 100 days, 50 specialists created two Altralight vehicles.

This and other experiments showed how a very light and streamlined design made it possible to make a very attractive car 2-2.5 times more economical than a conventional car.

Hybrid Electric Drive Meanwhile, other experiments (mostly in Europe) have found that a "hybrid" electric traction system improves fuel efficiency by 30-50%, in part by recovering 70% of braking energy, storing it temporarily and then reusing it for uphill and for acceleration. The vehicle is powered by burning any suitable liquid or gaseous fuel in a miniature on-board propulsion system of any kind (engine, gas turbine, fuel cell, etc.). Fuel is a more convenient way to store energy than batteries, which provide less than 1% of usable energy per unit weight.

That is why battery cars, as the Dutch specialist P. D. van der Kooh noted, "carry mostly batteries, but not very far and not very fast - otherwise they would need even more batteries."

After examining the situation, Rocky Mountain Institute analysts found something surprising: a clever combination of ultralight and hybrid drive strategies increased efficiency not by 2-3 times as expected, but by about 5 times. It was like discovering an equation that two plus one equals five. Soon, however, the main reasons for this magical synergy became clear:

the weight gain snowballs, because the lighter the car, the more components are reduced in size or become unnecessary;

The “accumulation” of weight savings is even faster in the case of a hybrid drive;

when the ultra-light strategy has almost completely eliminated dead energy (for heating the air, tires and road), the only place where the energy of the wheels can go will be the braking system, and "regenerative" electronic braking will return most of this energy;

the wheel energy savings are then multiplied by a factor of two or three due to the avoidance of cardan losses in delivering this energy to the wheels.

Thus, if the General Motors Altralight car were equipped with a hybrid electric drive instead of a traditional engine and drive axle in a gearbox unit, its efficiency would increase not by 2, but by about 4 times, i.e. up to 1.2-2.1 liters per 100 km. The IRM developers soon found ways to increase the efficiency of an attractive family car (a liter of gasoline per hundred plus kilometers). This is ultimately enough to cross the United States on one tank of fuel (0.8-1.6 l/100 km). And, much to their surprise, it turned out that such a car was so much simpler, and so much easier to manufacture than stamping, welding and painting steel, that in the end it could cost about the same as today's cars - and maybe even more. even less.

The Idea Spreads In the autumn of 1993, ISATA, Europe's largest conference on automotive technology, awarded the development its Nissan Prize as one of the top three out of 800 submissions. Car manufacturers began to pay considerable attention to it, it was increasingly covered in the press. The development was nominated for three US design awards. In April 1994, the US Department of Energy tested a two-seat light hybrid vehicle built by a Western Washington University student team on the Los Angeles freeways.

The result shown was 1.16 liters per 100 km. In the autumn of 1994, the scientific director of the IWW presided over an international conference in Aachen on the ultra-light hybrid variant, now called the "hypercar".

A small Swiss company, ESRORO, has demonstrated a light four-seater hybrid car that consumes 2.4 liters per 100 km. Notable achievements include the fourfold reduction in the price of carbon fiber over the past two years. This circumstance can undermine the position of steel as a material for the manufacture of car bodies at any volume of production.

By the end of 1996 more than 25 well-known manufacturers in many countries have decided to launch hypercars on the market. Some companies have committed themselves by investing heavily (totaling about two billion dollars) to achieve the goal before their competitors do. The tenfold potential of hypercars to reduce cycle times, tooling and tooling costs, body parts, assembly personnel, and floor space could give first-to-market companies a decisive competitive advantage.

Do not take the position of outside observers and the government. President Clinton's Next Generation Vehicle Partnership, which entered into an agreement in 1993 with three of the largest U.S. automakers to develop a triple-economy vehicle within 10 years, has been very supportive. Hypercars are expected to be categorized as "zero emission vehicles" by California's technical regulators in 1997 because they emit fewer toxic emissions than electric vehicle charging stations. This is an additional incentive to bring hypercars to market by 2003, when 10% of cars sold in California must have zero emissions.

Ready or not, that's it. Today's automobiles are astonishingly complex and sophisticated, representing the pinnacle of the Iron Age. But many experts believe they will be swept away by the biggest change in the industry since the chip's inception. Like computer manufacturing, such changes can occur anywhere in the world at relatively low capital costs and at astonishing speed. This is expected to eliminate smog in cities, increase the number of cars covering even longer distances (suggesting the urgent need for transport reforms, described in Section 6.3), and save more oil than oil exporting countries currently produce.

This can happen very quickly. Two of America's leading experts on fuel-efficient cars are Paul McCready (inventor of the Sunracer solar car, the human-powered Gossamer Condor aircraft, the shock battery car, and many other unique vehicles) and Robert Cumberford (correspondent for Automotive magazine). ”), it is believed that by 2005.

most of the cars on show in the showrooms will be electric, and almost all of them will be hybrids. Americans share the view of other experts that ultralight hybrids, with the advantages of electric propulsion and free of the disadvantages of batteries, are the future, and it is not far off.

Most people will buy hypercars not because they save 80%-95% fuel and reduce smog by 90%-99%, but rather because they are higher-end cars - in other words, for the same reason that people now buy CDs instead of vinyl phonograph records.

In the Rocky Mountains of Western Colorado, 25 km west of Aspen, at an altitude of m above sea level, there is a banana farm with passive solar lighting. This is not exactly the right place to grow bananas. It happens that the thermometer drops here to -44°C. The plant growth season between hard frosts is days, and frosts occur on any day. Once they came on July 4, thus violating the usual rule that there are two seasons - winter and July. It is often sunny, but sunny weather is unstable - in the middle of winter there are up to cloudy days, and sometimes there are no more than seven sunny days in December and January.

Nevertheless, in January, when these lines are written, in a snowstorm and a snowstorm, bananas ripen perfectly on three bushes, one of which has sprouted during the winter solstice. Two large green iguanas give students the opportunity to learn best practices in lizard breeding. Oranges ripen, a waterfall roars, a striped catfish frolics, and you start to think that doll-orangutans on bookshelves, very similar to real monkeys, come to life at night - how else to explain the lack of bananas?

As the days get longer in March and April, the jungle becomes lush with avocados, mangoes, grapes, papaya, Japanese medlar, and the edible passion flower. You come in from the street, where the blizzard howls, and you immediately feel the aroma of jasmine and bougainvillea (see ill. 1 on the inset).

And yet there is no traditional heating system, because one is not required and because it is uneconomical. Two small wood-burning stoves, used from time to time for heating or simply to please the inhabitants, provide 1% of the heat required by a typical house in the area, while the remaining 99% is “passive solar heat”. Even on overcast days, the sun's heat is captured through "superwindows" (see section 1.5), which provide the equivalent of 6 or, in the latest models, 12 sheets of glass insulation: transparent, colorless windows let in three-quarters of the visible light and half of all solar energy, but practically do not allow heat to escape. Styrofoam insulation inside the 40 cm thick stone walls, as well as in the roof, at least halves the heat loss.

There is plenty of fresh air - it is preheated by heat exchangers that return three-quarters of the heat that is usually carried away by stale air leaving the house.

How much did all this insulation cost? The additional costs for it were less than the construction savings associated with the absence of a furnace and an air duct. The rest of the money, plus a little more ($16 per square meter), is spent to save 50% of the water used, 99% of the energy for heating water and 90% of household electricity. At a rate of $0.07 per kilowatt hour, the household electricity bill is about $5 per month.

Daylight, coming from all directions, provides 95% of the required illumination;

ultra-efficient lamps save three-quarters of the energy required for supplementary lighting. The brightness of the lamps is adjusted depending on the presence of daylight, and when no one is in the room, they simply turn off. The refrigerator consumes only 8% and the freezer 15% of the usual amount of electricity, as they are over-insulated and cooled for half a year by a passive "heat pipe" connected to an outdoor metal fin. The dryer gets its heat from a solar "lantern" or light shaft. Washing machine For more details, see the book: Lovins A. V. "Visitor" s Guide ". RMI Publication H-l. 3d ed. 1991. 24 pp.

is a new top-loading horizontal axis design that saves about two-thirds of water and energy and three-quarters of soap, washing clothes better and extending their wear life. Even a traditional kitchen gas stove saves energy thanks to the use of double-walled Swiss pots and a British kettle, the insulation of which saves a third of the propane and reduces the time it takes to boil water. Outdoors, a super-insulated passive solar PV 'pen' helps piglets gain weight and hens lay eggs because they don't have to expend too much energy maintaining their own body temperature.

Thus, to save 99% of the energy used for space heating and water heating, 90% of household electricity and 50% of water, the total additional costs amounted to $16/sq. m x 372 sq. m, or about 6,000 dollars, i.e. approximately 1% of the total cost of the project in an area where the state average construction costs are twice as high. Compared to typical homes of the same size in the area, the energy savings are at least $7,100 per year. Therefore, the extra cost paid off in 10 months, after which savings accumulate at a rate averaging $19 a day, the equivalent of an oil well producing 1.3 barrels a day, or enough to support a medical student. Of course, 10 months is a long waiting period, but it was all done using the latest technology for that time. Today, everything can be done much better. For example, windows are now cheaper, but they retain heat 2 times better.

After paying for itself in the first 10 months, the energy savings will pay for the entire building for about 40 years. (The building must last at least 10 times as long; it was built for future archaeologists, who, from its south-facing orientation and from the unusual shape of the curved stone walls, will no doubt conclude that this is a temple of primitive sun worship. But to work, it can be of any shape, be adapted to almost any climate and any culture, and at the same time must save a certain amount of energy and money.) Within 40 years, saving electricity alone will avoid burning in a power plant the amount of coal that could be used twice fill up the building. Just one refrigerator each year saves as much coal as it can fit in. And the beer stays cold.

The building has already been visited by more than forty thousand guests; it received a lot of publicity in magazines and TV shows all over the world. Some come to see the technology in use, others to see what it's like to combine a farm and a 20-working R&D center under one roof. It is pleasant to go to work every day through the jungle, the length of which does not exceed 10 meters; someone suggested that we plant vines and jump to work, swinging on a branch. But most say that the most important feature of the building is that it helps its inhabitants feel better and work better.

Why do people sitting around the table remain cheerful and in a good mood all day, but if they are placed in a regular office, then in half an hour they can become lethargic and irritable? In our opinion, this is due to the calm atmosphere prevailing here, natural light, healthy indoor air, which should not be too hot and dry; the sound of the waterfall (tuned to the alpha rhythm of the brain and has a calming effect); the absence of mechanical noise and electromagnetic fields, the smell, oxygen and ions (and sometimes taste) of the green vegetation of the jungle, which is visible from everywhere. Perhaps there are other things that we do not yet understand, but this seems to be enough for a start.

Ultimately, the building should be comfortable and beautiful. The headquarters of the IWW is one of the first and so far one of the best in its design "green"

structures. Many details of this building could be greatly improved, but the basic principles and perfection of its layout continue to excite the imagination.

In 1983, Sweden introduced a standard for thermal insulation, making 50-60 kWh/m2 per year the maximum allowable heat loss for houses. In Germany, houses typically lose 200 kWh/m2 per year on average. Therefore, "factor four" in Germany could be achieved simply by adopting a Swedish building standard for all buildings, including old ones. Nevertheless, the amended German standard of 1995 requires a reduction in heat losses by 2000 for new buildings by only 20%.

Still, the Swedish standard could be significantly improved. One of the most famous examples is the "passive house" built in Darmstadt, 50 kilometers south of Frankfurt. In photo 2 on the tab, this is an ordinary, unobtrusive building. It got its name due to the use of passive solar energy and the almost complete absence of active heating. In a passive house, the need for additional heat is less than 15 kWh/m2 year and is achieved mainly through highly efficient wall and window insulation (Feist and Klin, 1994).

The house looks solid and reliable, as, indeed, all German houses. But here, even temperature distribution creates a feeling of comfort, and the absence of mechanical noise (since there is no oven and almost no mechanical equipment) and street noise (thanks to sound-absorbing super-windows and powerful insulation) ensures peaceful silence. The house is neither gloomy nor musty, it is full of light and fresh air. Everyone who enters here immediately embraces a sense of peace, reliable protection from the harsh outside world and at the same time unity with nature, because a green world opens through the large windows.

This house consumes only 10% of the usual amount of energy for heating the living area and 25% of the usual amount of electricity. Indeed, the total energy consumed by a home hardly exceeds the energy consumed by electrical appliances in a typical German home. The energy requirement for heating is so low that it is easily met by an ultra-efficient gas water heater, which is needed to produce hot water. A special oven for heating the room is not needed.

The building uses somewhat outdated windows, the thermal insulation of which is equivalent to eight sheets of ordinary glass. The best modern windows provide about 50% better insulation, and if they were used here, it would eliminate the last 5% of space heating costs. In addition, another important technical innovation, recently introduced for the first time in the Darmstadt “passive house”, would be required: a layer of foam insulation that forms a cap over the entire window frame and covers the edges of the glass itself, both inside and out, to a width of 3 cm. This variation of the teapot quilted window frame eliminates the usual loss of heat escaping through the window frame, with the edges of the glass insulated as well as the centerpiece. The production of such a system may well become mass-produced; it is suitable for installation both in buildings under construction and in existing buildings.

Another important innovation is bringing the incoming fresh air to the desired condition by first passing it through a plastic pipe buried in the ground at a depth of 3-4 meters. Even in the middle of winter, the ground at this depth is warm enough for the cold outside air to warm up to at least 8°C.

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Ernst von WEIZSACKER,
AmoryB.LOVINS,

L. Hunter LOVINS

FACTOR FOUR

Cost is half
return - double

New report to the Club of Rome

A. P. Zavarnitsyna and V. D. Novikov

edited by

academician G. A. Months

_______________________________________________________________________________

The publication was financially supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project 99-06-87107) within the program of the Central European University "Translation Project" with the support of the Center for the Development of Publishing Activities (OSI - Budapest) and the Open Society Institute. Assistance Fund (OSIAF - Moscow) Weizsacker E., Lovins E., Lovins L. FACTOR FOUR. The cost is half, the return is double. New report to the Club of Rome. Translation by A.P. Zavarnitsyn and V.D. Novikov, ed. Academician G. A. Months. M.: Academia, 2000. 400 p. How to reconcile a high quality of life and careful attitude to natural resources? The next report to the Club of Rome (1995), the authors of which are world-famous experts in the field of environmental protection, is devoted to the search for an answer to this question. The book offered to the attention of readers is a revised version of the mentioned report. The main content of the book is devoted to substantiating the concept of "resource productivity", by which the authors understand the ability to live twice as well and at the same time spend half as much. Hence the title of the book. The book is addressed to a wide range of readers. ISBN 5-874444-098-4 LBC 65 © Authors, 1997 © A. P. Zavarnitsyn, V. D. Novikov, 2000 © Academia Publishing House, 2000

From the translation editor

In 1968, a group of scientists and businessmen from different countries founded the Club of Rome - an international non-governmental organization, which set as its goal the study of global problems and ways to solve them. In 1972, the first report to the Club was published - "The Limits to Growth" by Donella and Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers and W. V. Behrens. The report, which attracted the attention of politicians and scientists around the world, argued that the fate of mankind was threatened by uncontrolled population growth, the ruthless exploitation of natural resources and environmental pollution. Some have taken The Limits to Growth as a prediction of the imminent end of the world.

More than 30 years have passed since then. The authors of the first report adjusted their computer model and published another report in 1992, "Beyond: Global Catastrophe or Sustainable Future?" And recently a new report to the Club of Rome “Factor Four. Doubling Wealth, Doubling Resources” which proposes some new solutions to the old problems facing humanity on the path to sustainable development. A few words about the authors of the book. Physicist and biologist, environmentalist and politician Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker( Ernst Ulrich von Weizsecker ), President of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy at the North Rhine-Westphalia Research Centre, Germany. Formerly Director of the Institute for European Environmental Policy in Bonn, in 1996 he became the first recipient of the Duke of Edinburgh's Gold Medal. Since 1998 he has been representing the city of Stuttgart in the German Bundestag. Amory Block Lovins( Amory Bloch Levins ) directs research and finance at the Rocky Mountain Institute { Rocky mountain Institute - RMI ), whose president is Hunter Lovins. They founded this non-profit resource policy center in 1982 in the Rocky Mountains (hence the Institute's name, which means "Rocky Mountains" in English), Colorado, USA. Amory Lovins is an experimental physicist educated at Harvard and Oxford. He has received an MA from Oxford, six honorary doctorates, and has published 26 books and several hundred articles. L. Hunter Lovins( L . Hunter lovins ) - lawyer, sociologist, political scientist, forester and cowboy. She holds an honorary doctorate and has co-authored many books and articles with Amory Lovins. She was awarded with him the Nissan, Mitchell and Alternative Nobel Prizes. The main areas of their joint work are systems design, problems of the automotive industry, power industry and construction, integration of resource efficiency into a sustainable development strategy. The goal of the Rocky Mountain Institute is to develop methods for the efficient use of resources. The Institute is independent of government, political parties, ideological or religious movements. About 50 of its employees conduct research and disseminate knowledge related to energy, transport, climate, water resources, agriculture, security, green building, economic development of various communities. The institute's budget is about three million dollars a year. Of this, 36-50% comes from consulting fees to private sector organizations and from the proceeds of the institute's commercial subsidiary, which is a source of technical and strategic information in the field of progressive and efficient energy use. The rest of the budget is made up of tax-free donations and grants from foundations. While in the US in February 1997, I visited the Rocky Mountain Institute where I met Dr. Amory Lovins. I was captivated by his idea of solving environmental problems and at the same time increasing the efficiency of natural resource consumption through improved technology. The breadth of Dr. Lovins' thinking is astounding. He is well aware that in order to achieve the goals set, it is necessary to solve many economic problems, and in some cases state regulation is necessary. I was also struck by the building of the institute. It in itself is the subject of scientific research. Suffice it to say that only a few percent of the energy needed for similar buildings in the same area is used to heat it. The rest of the energy comes from the sun, although winters are cold there - temperatures sometimes drop to -40°C. This is provided by special glasses that transmit sunlight well and at the same time are good heat insulators. Thermal insulation of walls, doors, windows is made at the highest level using modern materials. Due to the low energy consumption, the payback period for these materials does not exceed one year. Why am I, a physicist, interested in the ideas of Dr. E. Lovins and his colleagues? For more than 12 years, I was the chairman of the Ural Branch of the Academy of Sciences (first of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and then of the Russian Academy of Sciences). The Ural region of Russia is going through hard times. This is the land of ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, nuclear and defense industries, mechanical engineering, and mining enterprises. For hundreds of years, billions of tons of waste have accumulated on the surface of the Earth. In order to solve the environmental problems of the Urals, I participated in the creation of several institutes of the appropriate profile (Institute of Industrial Ecology, Institute of Ecology and Genetics of Microorganisms, Institute of Forest, Institute of the Steppe, etc.). It seemed self-evident that industry creates environmental problems, and scientists (biologists, chemists, physicians, physicists, etc.) think about how to solve them. However, it is equally important to think about how to change technologies in order to create fewer environmental problems. We need to move away from the mere cesspool role of scientists. In order for us to have a future, we need to radically improve technology, consume less energy, use natural resources efficiently. Factor Four offers solutions to these problems, so I asked Dr. E. Lovins for permission to translate the book into Russian, and he graciously agreed. Are we living right? And how to live right? These are, in fact, the main questions that the authors of Factor Four are trying to answer. This is not about wars, terrorism, drug addiction and other similar global problems, but about the economy, technology, ecology, natural resources. And about the free market, which is especially important for us, since we are trying to build a market economy in Russia. Since the Industrial Revolution, progress has meant increased productivity labor. Factor Four offers a new approach to progress, focusing on increasing productivity resources. According to the authors, we can live twice as well and at the same time spend half as many resources, which is necessary for the sustainable development of mankind in the future. The solution is to use electricity, water, fuel, materials, fertile land, etc. more efficiently, often at no additional cost and even profitably. As Factor Four very convincingly shows, most of the technical solutions to our problems already exist and must be used right now. At one time we talked a lot about energy-saving policy, the quintessence of which can be considered the well-known inscription on the walls of our institutions: “When leaving, turn off the light!” So the productive use of resources is not so new. The news is how many untapped opportunities exist. The authors give dozens of examples - from hypercars to videoconferencing, from new approaches in agriculture to economical models of refrigerators. At the same time, they not only give recommendations, sometimes quite simple, but also implement many of them in practice, as I had the opportunity to verify. The book is replete with practical examples of technologies that allow more efficient use of the world's resources. It can become a reference guide for those who want to understand how to put technology at the service of sustainable development and environmental protection. Unfortunately, in our daily life, we encounter dozens of counterexamples - from leaking taps through which whole seas of precious clean water flow, to heating mains in large cities that are shifted every three to four years, and their thermal insulation is such that in winter there is snow over them. melts. The book explains how to organize markets and restructure the tax system in such a way that people's well-being can increase without increasing resource consumption. For many developing countries, the efficiency revolution may offer the only real opportunity for prosperity in a relatively short period of time. But the new way of thinking is not acceptable to everyone, as the discussions at the World Environmental Forum in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 showed, to which many pages are devoted in the book. One of the main barriers to more efficient use of resources is the contradictions between developed and developing countries. For the latter, saving resources and caring for nature often recede into the background before the immediate tasks of combating poverty, which they are trying to solve on the path of development along the Western model, alas, not without many mistakes. The events of recent years have pushed Russia out of the developed country camp it seemed to belong to, to a position behind even many developing countries, so we are probably destined for our share of misconceptions and mistakes in addition to those already made. But according to the fair statement of one of the authors, Dr. Amory Lovins, Russia has priceless wealth - these are its people, with their stamina and resourcefulness, inner strength and talent, talent and spiritual depth. I think that the book offered to the reader's attention can, to some extent, help us realize this enormous wealth. August 1999

Academician G. A. MONTH

Preface to the Russian edition

This book, which tells about new ways to use resources much more effectively for the sake of global security, health, justice and prosperity, made a strong impression in Western Europe and beyond. Since the book was first published in 1995, the Dutch and German governments, and later the European Community, have adopted the ideas it describes as the basis for sustainable development. The only opponents were the Swedes, who, unlike the OECD environment ministers, decided to increase the efficiency of resource use not by 4, but by 10 times. In fact, 10x savings can be cheaper and produce better results than 4x savings; in any case, the four is on the way to the ten, so let's not argue which number is better. Perhaps the number 20 that the United Nations Environment Program is aiming for is even better. But whatever the goal, the direction of movement is determined, and it's time to hit the road. "Factor Four" helps to set a goal, develop a strategy and outline the first steps. The book has already been translated into more than 10 languages, and I am especially pleased that, at the suggestion of Academician G. A. Mesyats, the Russian Academy of Sciences has made this book available to the Russian-speaking reader. I am grateful for the efforts made and hope that the content of the book will be consonant with the new thinking that has recently emerged in Russia. Of course, many of the details mentioned here have no analogues in Russian reality, but attentive readers will no doubt draw the appropriate conclusions and apply our experience in Russian conditions. The part of the world you live in is of particular interest to me for several reasons. I studied at Harvard in the Russian department. I have some practical experience of trying to help Russian colleagues in saving energy. And finally, I am a descendant of four Ukrainian grandparents. So, I hope I will be forgiven for being bold if I offer some thoughts about why the Russians, I believe, can make a unique contribution to the realization of the ideas of this book, not only at home, but throughout the world. Russia is an outstanding country. Its resilient and resourceful people have endured and overcome great adversity and achieved many successes that the world admires. Today Russia is in trouble again. It is not easy to bear the burden of an exceptionally difficult thousand-year history. But any dangers, any difficulties are harbingers of new opportunities. And now Russia and the whole world have a single path that inspires great hopes. I mean not only the near future, but first of all a long-term strategy that will determine our common destinies. In this world strategy, Russia has a place of great and ever-increasing importance. Let me explain why. The time in which we live poses a new challenge to all of us, and Russia, like never before, can use its unique resource, which will increasingly determine its special and significant role in global development. This resource is the inner strength and talent of Russians. The unified world economy of the 21st century will be relatively less dependent on physical resources than before. Of course, Russia's mineral and land resources will not lose their significance. But in an economy that produces more and more with less physical input, what is most valuable will be what of people in their heads and souls. There is no need to conserve these human resources - like coal, timber or nickel. On the contrary, they must be used generously, generously, even wastefully, because they differ from physical resources in their inexhaustibility. The more you use them, the more they become. In the emerging global information economy, which is largely based on human resources, Russia's advantage lies in priceless wealth - its people. Their natural gifts, enriched by history and one of the most thoughtful and effective systems of universal education, are a unique treasure. This treasure can serve as the basis of a new Russian economy - stable, comprehensive and deep, because it will rely not on oil, which can run out, not on steel, which can be eaten by rust, not on sturgeon, which can be caught by poachers, but on the most precious a capital more needed and more respected in the world - a capital that is confident, well-educated, gifted people with their age-old culture. World-class scientists and engineers leading and innovating in every field; the industry that created the defense power; amazing talent of writers, musicians and artists; natural wisdom and ancient customs of the villagers; the compassion of doctors and the dedication of teachers; the spiritual depth of the great Russian soul - these and other precious resources of Russia constitute the capital that the world will cherish more and more and use more and more widely. And the world is ready to pay for this capital. Thanks to the experience of Russian science and technology, combined with the capacities and specialists of its military-industrial complex, many acute environmental problems (in Russia itself, in Eastern Europe, in China - everywhere, including both American continents) can be solved on the way to a safer life. , healthy childhood, prosperous economy. First-class Russian programmers are able to contribute to the solution of technical problems associated with the so-called "computer error of the year 2000". Russian teachers will help their American colleagues develop new approaches to serious problems in my country's schools. Russia's unsurpassed experts in combating terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction will work with their foreign partners to make the world a safer place for our children and to prevent a global catastrophe. And finally, the restructuring of the world economy, the more productive use of energy, water and materials is another large-scale task that will require Russian hands and Russian minds. Russia has previously cooperated with the West in various areas of mutual interest: space, environmental protection, international security. Many joint projects were successful, but they appeared from time to time. A systematic approach will bring much more tangible results to all of us. Strengthening the role of independent non-governmental organizations will help overcome the problems created in our countries by bureaucracy and political instability, which make joint action less effective than it could be. In addition, a careful choice of policies that ensure openness and honesty in the field of knowledge work will protect Russian innovations from piracy and bring them a fair reward. Some fruitful ideas for the practical implementation of a new approach to using the experience and ideas of Russian citizens to solve many global problems have already been proposed by the leaders of the Russian Academy of Sciences and members of the Russian government. They were also discussed with American leaders. We must move from these preliminary discussions to serious action. All people and all nations have their tasks. All people and all nations discover in themselves the talent and determination to find answers to them. We have a lot to think about and do, relying on trust and mutual understanding, on the friendship and boundless patience of the Russian people. In their special talent lies the key to solving the world's problems. This book attempts to suggest some of the practical steps needed to realize this enormous potential. Together, step by step, patiently and gradually, we can create a better world for ourselves and our children, the world of our hopes. Snowmass, Colorado, 81654, USA

Amory Block LOVINS,

Senior Vice President and Fellow of the Rocky Mountain Institute

Foreword

Factor four is the right idea at the right time, which should be a symbol of progress, a result that the Club of Rome would welcome. Doubling wealth while doubling the consumption of resources - this is the essence of the task posed in "First global revolution"(King and Schneider, 1991), the very first report of the Club of Rome. If we fail to double our wealth, how can we ever hope to solve the problems of poverty to which Bertrand Schneider (1994) draws attention in "Scandal and shame"? And how to deal with the difficult problem of controllability that Jezechel Dror addresses in his recent report? On the other hand, how can we ever return to ecological balance on Earth if we cannot halve our resource consumption? Halving resource consumption truly means "Deal with nature" what is the name of Woeter van Dieren's last report to the Club. Halving resource consumption is closely related to the complex issue of sustainable development that dominated the World Environmental Forum in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. But remember that this goal was set 20 years earlier in the famous report to the Club of Rome "Limits to Growth" Donella and Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers and Bill Behrens (Meadows et al., 1972). Thus, a doubling of wealth and a doubling of resources indicate the scale world issues, which the Club of Rome considers the core of its activities. We are proud of what we can present "Factor Four" as a new hopeful report to the Club indicating some of the steps that humanity needs to take. "Factor Four" can contribute to problem solving, raised by the Club in "First Global Revolution". We would like to acknowledge with gratitude the contribution of two pioneers in the field of energy efficiency - Amory and Hunter Lovins, involved in this work by our member Ernst von Weizsäcker, who became the initiator of making "Factor Four" another report to the Club. The authors were able to collect 50 impressive examples of quadrupling the productivity of resources and thereby demonstrate the wide possibilities of the ideas outlined in the Factor Four report. Each report to the Club of Rome sums up the results of comprehensive research and discussion by Club members and other leading experts. In the case of Factor Four, the results were summed up at an international conference of the Club of Rome, organized with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, in Bonn in March 1995. The conference gave all interested members of the Club the opportunity to provide information for the forthcoming report, the draft of which was circulated in advance. The Executive Committee of the Club of Rome decided in June 1995 to accept the revised manuscript as a report to the Club. On behalf of the Club of Rome, I express my sincere hope that this new report will contribute to an international discussion involving both politicians and experts. Madrid, December 1996

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New report to the Club of Rome

FACTOR FOUR

Ernst von WEIZSACKER, Amory B. LOVINS, L. Hunter LOVINS

Translation

A.P. Zavarnitsyn and V.D. Novikov

Weizsacker E., Lovins E., Lovins L. FACTOR FOUR. The cost is half, the return is double. New report to the Club of Rome. Translation by A.P. Zavarnitsyn and V.D. Novikov, ed. Academician G.A. Months. M.: Academia, 2000. 400 p.

The book is addressed to a wide range of readers.

ISBN 5-874444-098-4

BBC 65

From the translation editor

In 1968, a group of scientists and businessmen from different countries founded the Club of Rome, an international non-governmental organization that set as its goal the study of global problems and ways to solve them. In 1972, the first report to the Club was published - "The Limits to Growth" by Donella and Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers and V.V. Berens. The report, which attracted the attention of politicians and scientists around the world, argued that the fate of mankind was threatened by uncontrolled population growth, the ruthless exploitation of natural resources and environmental pollution. Some have taken The Limits to Growth as a prediction of the imminent end of the world.

L. Hunter Lovins is a lawyer, sociologist, political scientist, forester, and cowboy. She holds an honorary doctorate and has co-authored many books and articles with Amory Lovins. She was awarded with him the Nissan, Mitchell and Alternative Nobel Prizes.

The goal of the Rocky Mountain Institute is to develop methods for the efficient use of resources. The Institute is independent of government, political parties, ideological or religious movements. About 50 of its employees conduct research and disseminate knowledge related to energy, transport, climate, water resources, agriculture, security, green building, economic development of various communities. The institute's budget is about three million dollars a year. Of these, 36-50% comes from consulting fees to private sector organizations and from the proceeds of the institute's commercial subsidiary, which is a source of technical and strategic information in the field of progressive and efficient energy use.

The rest of the budget is made up of tax-free donations and grants from foundations.

I was also struck by the building of the institute. It in itself is the subject of scientific research. Suffice it to say that only a few percent of the energy needed for similar buildings in the same area is used to heat it. The rest of the energy is obtained from the sun, although the winters are cold there - the temperature sometimes drops to -40°C. This is provided by special glasses that transmit sunlight well and at the same time are good heat insulators. Thermal insulation of walls, doors, windows is made at the highest level using modern materials. Due to the low energy consumption, the payback period for these materials does not exceed one year.

Are we living right? And how to live right? These are, in fact, the main questions that the authors of Factor Four are trying to answer. This is not about wars, terrorism, drug addiction and other similar global problems, but about the economy, technology, ecology, natural resources. And about the free market, which is especially important for us, since we are trying to build a market economy in Russia. Since the Industrial Revolution, progress has meant increased productivity. Factor Four offers a new approach to progress, focusing on increasing resource productivity. According to the authors, we can live twice as well and at the same time spend half as many resources, which is necessary for the sustainable development of mankind in the future. The solution is to use electricity, water, fuel, materials, fertile land, etc. more efficiently, often at no additional cost and even profitably. As Factor Four very convincingly shows, most of the technical solutions to our problems already exist and must be used right now.

At one time we talked a lot about energy-saving policy, the quintessence of which can be considered the well-known inscription on the walls of our institutions: “When leaving, turn off the light!” So the productive use of resources is not so new. The news is how many untapped opportunities exist. The authors cite dozens of examples, from hypercars to video conferencing, from new approaches in agriculture to economical models of refrigerators. At the same time, they not only give recommendations, sometimes quite simple, but also implement many of them in practice, as I had the opportunity to verify. The book is replete with practical examples of technologies that allow more efficient use of the world's resources. It can become a reference guide for those who want to understand how to put technology at the service of sustainable development and environmental protection. Unfortunately, in our daily life we encounter dozens of counterexamples - from leaking taps through which entire seas of precious clean water flow, to heating mains in large cities that are shifted every three or four years, and their thermal insulation is such that in winter the snow over melts them.

The book explains how to organize markets and restructure the tax system in such a way that people's well-being can increase without increasing resource consumption.

One of the main barriers to a more efficient use of resources is the contradictions between developed and developing countries. For the latter, saving resources and caring for nature often recede into the background before the immediate tasks of combating poverty, which they are trying to solve on the path of development along the Western model, alas, not without many mistakes. The events of recent years have pushed Russia out of the developed country camp it seemed to belong to, to a position behind even many developing countries, so we are probably destined for our share of misconceptions and mistakes in addition to those already made. But according to the fair assertion of one of the authors, Dr. Amory Lovins, Russia has priceless wealth - these are its people, with their stamina and resourcefulness, inner strength and talent, talent and spiritual depth. I think that the book offered to the reader's attention can, to some extent, help us realize this enormous wealth.

August 1999

Academician G.A. MONTH

Preface to the Russian edition* * Translated by N. Sen

The book has already been translated into more than 10 languages, and I am especially pleased that, at the suggestion of Academician G.A. Months the Russian Academy of Sciences made this book available to the Russian-speaking reader. I am grateful for the efforts made and hope that the content of the book will be consonant with the new thinking that has recently emerged in Russia. Of course, many of the details mentioned here have no analogues in Russian reality, but attentive readers will no doubt draw the appropriate conclusions and apply our experience in Russian conditions.

Russia is an outstanding country. Its resilient and resourceful people have endured and overcome great adversity and achieved many successes that the world admires.

The unified world economy of the 21st century will be relatively less dependent on physical resources than before. Of course, Russia's mineral and land resources will not lose their significance. But in an economy that produces more and less physically, the most valuable will be what people have in their heads and souls. There is no need to conserve these human resources like coal, timber or nickel. On the contrary, they must be used generously, generously, even wastefully, because they differ from physical resources in their inexhaustibility. The more you use them, the more they become.

In the emerging global information economy, which is largely based on human resources, Russia's advantage lies in priceless wealth - its people. Their natural gifts, enriched by history and one of the most thoughtful and effective systems of universal education, are a unique treasure. This treasure can serve as the basis of a new Russian economy - stable, comprehensive and deep, because it will be based not on oil, which can run out, not on steel, which can be eaten by rust, not on sturgeon, which can be caught by poachers, but on the very a precious capital, more needed and more respected in the world - a capital which is a confident, well-educated, gifted people with their age-old culture.

World-class scientists and engineers leading and innovating in every field; the industry that created the defense power; amazing talent of writers, musicians and artists; natural wisdom and ancient customs of the villagers; the compassion of doctors and the dedication of teachers; the spiritual depth of the great Russian soul - these and other precious resources of Russia constitute the capital that the world will value more and more and use more and more widely. And the world is ready to pay for this capital.

Thanks to the experience of Russian science and technology, combined with the capacities and specialists of its military-industrial complex, many acute environmental problems (in Russia itself, in Eastern Europe, in China - everywhere, including both American continents) can be solved on the way to a safer life, healthy childhood, prosperous economy. First-class Russian programmers are able to contribute to the solution of technical problems associated with the so-called "computer error of the year 2000". Russian teachers will help their American colleagues develop new approaches to serious problems in my country's schools. Russia's unsurpassed experts in combating terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction will work with their foreign partners to make the world a safer place for our children and to prevent a global catastrophe. And finally, the restructuring of the world economy, the more productive use of energy, water and materials is another large-scale task that will require Russian hands and Russian minds.

Foreword

Each report to the Club of Rome sums up the results of comprehensive research and discussion by Club members and other leading experts. In the case of Factor Four, the results were summed up at an international conference of the Club of Rome, organized with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, in Bonn in March 1995. The conference gave all interested members of the Club the opportunity to provide information for the forthcoming report, the draft of which was circulated in advance. The Executive Committee of the Club of Rome decided in June 1995 to accept the revised manuscript as a report to the Club.

On behalf of the Club of Rome, I express my sincere hope that this new report will contribute to an international discussion involving both politicians and experts.

Madrid, December 1996

Ricardo Dies HOCHLEITNER,

President of the Club of Rome

Introduction

In this trailblazing program, we have taken as a starting point the concerns expressed in the early 1970s by the Club of Rome, which shocked the world with its "Limits to Growth" report (Meadows et al., 1972). But this time we give an optimistic answer. We will demonstrate that there are equilibrium scenarios. Factor Four, in our opinion, can bring the Earth back into balance (to use a metaphor from Al Gore's compelling bestseller [Gore, 1992]).

We would like to thank the Club of Rome for the constant inter pec to our project. To discuss the manuscript of the book, a special seminar of the Club of Rome was organized in Bonn in March 1995, sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the German Environmental Protection Fund. As a result, most of the text was rewritten and sent to the members of the Executive Committee of the Club, which in June 1995 accepted the book as a report to the Club. The President of the Club of Rome has done us the great honor of writing the preface to this edition.

Initially, the manuscript was written in various versions of the English language. Half of the text was written by an author whose native language is German, the other half by two Americans who lived respectively 2 and 14 years in England, but hardly managed to reach the level of William Shakespeare. For (the first publication, the entire book was translated into German and presented in September 1995 under the title "Faktor Vier: Doppelter Wohlstand -- Halbierter Naturverbrauch" by Dremer-Knaur, Munich. (A loosely translated subtitle might be "Live twice as good, consume half as much" or, more accurately, as on the title page of this book.) The book became a bestseller almost immediately and remained so for more than six months. Agreement was granted for translations into Spanish, Swedish, Czech, Italian, Korean and Japanese, and requests were received for other languages. All over the world, there was a rapid increase in interest from the industrial community. The authors have received hundreds of letters of approval, many of which provide new practical examples of the Factor Four principles. Furthermore, two of us, Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, have written with Paul Hocken a highly acclaimed book intended for US rather than European conditions, and primarily for business people. circles* * Paul Hocken, Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins: Natural Capitalism, Earthscan Publications Ltd, London..

We are deeply indebted to all those who participated in the discussion of this book even before it appeared in what we hope is more accurate English. Hundreds of people were involved in the creation of the book. Here we will name only a few of them, including those who actively participated in the meeting of the Club of Rome, which discussed the book. These are Franz Alt, Owen Bailey, Benjamin Bassen, Maris Biermann, Jérôme Binde, Raymond Bleischwitz, Stefanie Beghe, Holger Berner, Hartmut Bossel, Frank Bosshardt, Stefan Bringezu, Leo-nor Briones (Manila), Bill Browning, Michael Brylavsky, Maria Bui Tenkamp, Scott Chaplin, David Kramer, Maureen Kewerton, Hans Diefenbacher, Woeter Van Dieren, Ricardo Diez Hochleitner, Reuben Doymling, Hans Peter Dürr, Barbara Eggers, Felix FitzRoy, Claude Füssler, Paul Hocken, Rick Head , Peter Hennicke, Friedrich Hinterberger, Alice Hubbard, Wolfram Hanke, Reimut Johimsen, Ashok Khosla, Albrecht Koschützke, Sascha Kranendonk, Hans Kretschmer, Martin Lies, André Lehmann, Harry Lehmann, Christa Liedke, Jochen Luhmann, Manfred Max-Neef (Valdivia) , Mark Merritt, Nils Meyer, Timothy Moore, Ki-kujiro Namba (Tokyo), Hermann Ott, Andreas Pastowski, Rudolf Petersen, Richard Pinkham, Wendy Pratt, Josef Romm, Jen Seal, Wolfgang Sachs, Carl-Otto Schallabeck, Friedrich Schmidt- Bleeck, Harald Schumann, Eberhard Seifert, Farley Sheldon, Bill Scheiermann, Walter St Ael, Klaus Steilmann, Ursula Tischner, Reinhard Uberhorst, Carl Christian von Weizsäcker, Christine von Weizsäcker, Franz von Weizsäcker, Anders Weikmann and Heinrich Wohlmeyer.

Without the pioneering work of Herman Dali, Donella and Dennis Meadows. Paul Hawken, Hazel Henderson, Bill McDonough, and David Orr, it would be almost impossible to conceive a book of this magnitude. We also thank the sponsors of the Bonn meeting and the government of North Rhine-Westphalia for a substantial grant to the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy at the North Rhine Wuppertal Science Centre, with the task of researching and putting into practice the principles of this book. Much of the credit goes to Earthscan Publications in London, which did an excellent job of publishing the book and facilitating its distribution. We are especially grateful to Jonathan Sinclair Wilson and Rowan Davies.

January 1997

Ernst von WEIZSACKER

Amory B. LOVINS

L. Hunter LOVINS

List of abbreviations

GDP -- Gross Domestic Product -- Gross Domestic Product, GDP

WMO -- World Meteorological Organization -- World Meteorological Organization, WMO

GNP -- Gross National Product -- Gross National Product, GNP

WTO -- World Trade Organization -- World Trade Organization, WTO

GATT -- General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade -- General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, GATT

GDS -- German Dual System -- Duales System Deutschland, DSD

ISEW -- Index ofSustainable Economic Welfare, ISEW

KOCP -- United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, UNCED

KSEG -- Corporate Average Fuel Economy -- Corporate Average Fuel Economy, CAFE

IMF -- International Monetary Fund -- International Monetary Fund, IMF

IPCC -- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- IPCC

MKHP -- International Conference on Population and Development, ICPD

MCK -- Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, INC

MCHC -- International Council of Scientific Unions, ICSU

ICC -- International Chamber of Commerce -- International Chamber of Commerce, ICC

OPEC -- Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC

OECD -- Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development -- Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD

UNFCCC -- Framework Convention on Climate Change, FCCC

SMOG -- Alliance of Small Island States -- Alliance of Small Island States, AOSIS

FNE -- New Economics Foundation -- New Economics Foundation, NEF

HUVR -- Chlorinated Hydrocarbon (CHC) Solvents

ENR -- Ecological Tax Reform, ETR

ACT2 -- Advanced Customer Technology Test for Maximum Energy Efficiency

CAFE -- Corporate Average Fuel Economy -- Corporate Average Fuel Economy, KSEG

ISEW -- Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare

MIPS -- Material Inputs Per Service Unit -- Material consumption of a service, material costs per unit of work

NAFTA -- North American Free Trade Agreement -- North American Free Trade Agreement

PCSD -- President's Council for Sustainable Development -- President's Council for Sustainable Development

PG&E -- Pacific Gas and Electric Company -- Pacific Gas and Electric Company

RMI -- Rocky Mountain Institute

UNCED -- United Nations Conference on Environment and Development

UNDP -- United Nations Development Program -- United Nations Development Program

UNEP -- United Nations Environment Program

WCED -- World Commission for Environment and Development

WRAP -- Waste Reduction Always Pays -- Waste reduction always pays off.

Introduction

Get more with less

Exciting prospects for progress

In a few words, "factor four" means that resource productivity can and should quadruple. The wealth extracted from one unit of natural resources can quadruple. Thus, we can live twice as well and at the same time spend half as much.

This idea is both new and simple.

It is new because it heralds nothing more than a new direction of scientific and technological progress. In the past, progress has been about increasing productivity. We believe that resource performance is just as important and should be treated as a top priority.

The idea is also exciting. Some aspects of this revolution in efficiency are already being realized at lower costs, ie. can be used to advantage. Countries that revolutionize efficiency win in international competition.

The revolutionary rise in efficiency is sure to become a global trend. As is always the case with new opportunities, who paves the way in a new direction reaps the greatest harvest.

Moral and material reasons

Book cannot change the direction of progress. This must be done by people - consumers and voters, leaders and engineers, politicians and journalists. People don't change their habits unless there is good reason to do so. A critical mass of people must feel an overwhelming need, otherwise there will not be enough momentum to change the course of our civilization.

Otherwise, the world may face unprecedented disasters and catastrophes. Is it possible to cross such a gigantic abyss at all? You can, thanks to Factor Four.

The countries that start first will benefit the most. Countries that hesitate are likely to suffer huge losses in their capital, which will be quickly depleted away from the main routes of resource efficiency.

Treating the Disease of Waste with Efficiency

Why do we believe it? Mainly because we see our society in the arms of a serious but curable disease. It is not much different from the disease that our grandparents called "consumption" * * A play on words: consumption is simultaneously translated as "consumption" and as "consumption". -- Note. transl. because he made his victims waste* ** A play on words: waste away means "waste" and "waste" at the same time. -- Note. transl.*. Today's economic tuberculosis does not deplete our bodies or our resources (waste energy and resources remain useless environmental pollutants), but its impact on people and the planet is just as detrimental, costly and contagious.

We were told that industrialization was the result of increasing levels of efficiency and productivity. The productivity of human labor has, of course, increased many times over since the beginning of the industrial revolution. We have increased our production capacity by replacing human labor with machines. However, this change has gone too far. We over-consume resources such as energy, raw materials, water, soil and air. The gain in "productivity" achieved in this way destroys living systems that not only provide us with basic resources, but must also absorb the waste of our civilization.

A popular argument in the current controversy is that any solution to environmental problems will be very costly. The revolution in resource efficiency discussed in this book makes this argument fallacious. Increasing resource efficiency and curing the "waste disease" is indeed a great economic opportunity. Such treatment causes almost no pain and has a calming effect on both natural systems and the social structure of world civilization.

When people think of waste, they think of their household waste, car exhaust, and dumpsters near businesses and construction sites. If you ask how much material is wasted every year, most people will find this amount not too much. In reality, we waste resources more than ten times more than we use them. A study commissioned by the US National Academy of Engineering found that approximately 93% of the materials we buy and “spend” never materialize into products that meet market demands. Moreover, 80% of goods are thrown away after a single use, and a significant part of the rest of the products do not serve the entire prescribed period. Reformist economist Paul Hawken estimates that 99% of the raw materials used in the manufacture of goods in the United States, or contained in these goods, become waste six weeks after they are sold.

Such losses are unreasonably high. The average American, for example, pays nearly US$2,000* per year* *Unless otherwise noted, prices below are quoted in US$* for energy either purchased directly for the family or embodied in manufactured goods and services. Add to this the waste of metal, soil, water, wood, fiber, and the cost of transporting all these materials, and we find that the average American loses thousands of dollars every year. These losses, multiplied by 250 million people, add up to at least a trillion dollars a year wasted. On a global scale, the amount of losses can reach 10 trillion dollars a year. Such losses impoverish families (especially the poor), reduce competition, jeopardize resource supplies, poison water, air, soil and people, generate unemployment, and stifle economic viability.

Efficiency treatment

Over the past few years, the number of paths to success has increased significantly. Completely unexpected opportunities for entrepreneurship and for society have opened up. This book introduces new opportunities for efficient use of resources, describes them and calls for action. Shown here are practical, profitable ways to use resources at least four times more efficiently than we do now. In other words, we can do everything we do today just as well, or even better, with only one quarter of the energy and materials that are currently in use. This would make it possible, for example, to double the standard of living on Earth, while halving the consumption of resources. The reality and economic efficiency of other, even more ambitious and large-scale projects are becoming more and more obvious.

Doing more with less is not the same as doing less, doing worse, or doing nothing. Efficiency does not mean cutting back, inconveniencing, or depriving something. When several U.S. presidents proclaimed, “Energy saving means hotter summers and colder winters,” they overlooked the efficient use of energy that would give us more comfort in better buildings for less energy or money. To avoid this widespread confusion, we refrain from using the ambiguous term "resource conservation" in this book and replace it with the terms "resource efficiency" or "resource productivity".

Seven Arguments for Efficient Use of Resources

The moral and material reasons we have given for moving towards efficiency may seem somewhat abstract. Now we will be more specific, pointing out seven reasons for doing just that.

Live better. Efficient use of resources improves the quality of life. We can see better with efficient lighting systems, keep food fresher longer in efficient refrigerators, produce better products in efficient factories, travel more safely and comfortably in efficient vehicles, feel better in efficient buildings, and eat more efficiently in efficient buildings. grown agricultural products.

Less polluting and depleting. Everything has to go somewhere. Waste resources pollute the air, water or land. Efficiency fights waste and therefore reduces pollution, which is essentially the diversion of resources. Efficient use of resources can make a significant contribution to solving problems such as acid rain and climate change, deforestation, loss of soil fertility and crowding in the streets. Efficient energy use plus productive, sustainable agriculture and forestry alone could eliminate up to 90% of today's environmental problems, not at a cost, but - under favorable conditions - at a profit. Efficiency can free up a lot of time, and during this time we will learn how to solve the world's problems thoughtfully, intelligently and consistently.

Get profit. Efficient use of resources usually pays off: you don't have to pay for resources now, and because they don't become pollutants, you don't have to pay to clean them up later.

Enter the markets and attract entrepreneurs. Since the efficient use of resources can be profitable, much of the efficiency can be realized through the market mechanism, driven by individual choice and firm competition, rather than government directives on how we should live. Market forces can theoretically drive the efficiency of resources. However, we still have a significant task ahead of us in removing the obstacles and reversing the reckless aspirations that keep the market from working at its full potential.

Increase the use of scarce capital. The money freed up by loss prevention can be used to solve other problems. In particular, developing countries have an excellent opportunity not to invest scarce capital in inefficient infrastructure, but to make better use of it. If a country buys equipment to produce very energy efficient lamps or windows, it can provide energy for as little as one-tenth of what it would take to build more power plants. These investments pay off at least three times faster, and by re-investing capital in other industries, the volume of services provided by the invested capital can be increased by more than 30 times. (According to some estimates, the savings could be even higher). For many developing countries, this is the only realistic way to achieve relatively rapid prosperity.

Enhance security. Competition for resources causes or exacerbates international conflicts. Efficient use saves resources and reduces the unhealthy dependence on them that is a source of political instability. Efficiency can reduce the number of international conflicts over oil, cobalt, forests, water - everything that someone has and someone else wants to have. (Some countries pay the price of military spending, as well as directly for their dependence on resources: one sixth to a quarter of the US military budget is allocated to forces whose main task is to gain or maintain access to foreign resources.) Energy conservation can even indirectly prevent nuclear proliferation. weapons through the use of cheaper and militarily safer energy sources instead of nuclear power plants and related dual-use materials, skills and technologies.

Be fair and have more jobs. Waste of resources is the flip side of a warped economy that splits society into those who have jobs and those who don't. If human energy and talent do not find their proper application, this is a tragedy. And yet the main reason for the waste of human resources is the erroneous and wasteful way of scientific and technological progress. We are making fewer people "productive" by consuming more resources and effectively marginalizing one-third of the world's workforce. We need a sound economic stimulus that will solve two pressing problems at once: create employment for more people and save resources. Enterprises should get rid of unproductive kilowatt-hours, tons and liters, and not their employees. This would happen much faster if we reduced the taxation of labor and increased taxes on the use of resources accordingly.

This book contains a set of tools for modern resource efficiency. Here are fifty examples of at least a fourfold increase in resource efficiency. In these examples, you will be able to get acquainted with the available methods, learn how they work, what they are capable of and how to put them to good use in practice. Each of us—whether at work, at home or school, in the private, public, or nonprofit sectors, in interactions with others, or in our personal lives—can pick up these tools and take action.

What's new in efficiency?

However, today there are not only new technologies, but also new ways to tie them together, so that large energy savings can often be achieved at less cost than small savings. When a series of coherent, efficient technologies is implemented in the proper sequence, in the right way, and in the right proportions (like step-by-step cooking of a good recipe), a new unified process emerges from separate technological details, promising economic benefits.

This is strikingly contrary to worldly wisdom, according to which "you get what you pay for" - the more expensive the better. A slightly more efficient car costs more to build than a conventional car, while a super-efficient car costs less to build than a conventional car - how can that be? There are five main reasons for this. These are discussed in the detailed examples of energy efficiency in the first chapter.

FACTOR FOUR

FACTOR FOUR

From the translation editor

Preface to the Russian edition

Foreword

Factor of international trade and problems of development of competition

Factors contributing to the onset of the "troubled" time in Russia

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

FACTOR FOUR

Ernst von WEIZSACKER, Amory B. LOVINS, L. Hunter LOVINS

Translation

A.P. Zavarnitsyn and V.D. Novikov

Weizsacker E., Lovins E., Lovins L. FACTOR FOUR. The cost is half, the return is double. New report to the Club of Rome. Translation by A.P. Zavarnitsyn and V.D. Novikov, ed. Academician G.A. Months. M.: Academia, 2000. 400 p.

The book is addressed to a wide range of readers.

ISBN 5-874444-098-4

BBC 65

© Authors, 1997

© A.P. Zavarnitsyn, V.D. Novikov, 2000

© Publishing house «Academia», 2000

From the translation editor

Preface to the Russian edition* * Translated by N. Sen

Foreword

On behalf of the Club of Rome, I express my sincere hope that this new report will contribute to an international discussion involving both politicians and experts.

Madrid, December 1996

Ricardo Dies HOCHLEITNER,

President of the Club of Rome

Introduction

List of abbreviations

GDP -- Gross Domestic Product -- Gross Domestic Product, GDP

WMO -- World Meteorological Organization -- World Meteorological Organization, WMO

GNP -- Gross National Product -- Gross National Product, GNP

WTO -- World Trade Organization -- World Trade Organization, WTO

GATT -- General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade -- General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, GATT

GDS -- German Dual System -- Duales System Deutschland, DSD

ISEW -- Index ofSustainable Economic Welfare, ISEW

KOCP -- United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, UNCED

KSEG -- Corporate Average Fuel Economy -- Corporate Average Fuel Economy, CAFE

IMF -- International Monetary Fund -- International Monetary Fund, IMF

IPCC -- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- IPCC

MKHP -- International Conference on Population and Development, ICPD

MCK -- Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, INC

MCHC -- International Council of Scientific Unions, ICSU

ICC -- International Chamber of Commerce -- International Chamber of Commerce, ICC

OPEC -- Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC

OECD -- Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development -- Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD

UNFCCC -- Framework Convention on Climate Change, FCCC

SMOG -- Alliance of Small Island States -- Alliance of Small Island States, AOSIS

FNE -- New Economics Foundation -- New Economics Foundation, NEF

HUVR -- Chlorinated Hydrocarbon (CHC) Solvents

ENR -- Ecological Tax Reform, ETR

ACT2 -- Advanced Customer Technology Test for Maximum Energy Efficiency

CAFE -- Corporate Average Fuel Economy -- Corporate Average Fuel Economy, KSEG

ISEW -- Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare

MIPS -- Material Inputs Per Service Unit -- Material consumption of a service, material costs per unit of work

NAFTA -- North American Free Trade Agreement -- North American Free Trade Agreement

PCSD -- President's Council for Sustainable Development -- President's Council for Sustainable Development

PG&E -- Pacific Gas and Electric Company -- Pacific Gas and Electric Company

RMI -- Rocky Mountain Institute

UNCED -- United Nations Conference on Environment and Development

UNDP -- United Nations Development Program -- United Nations Development Program

UNEP -- United Nations Environment Program

WCED -- World Commission for Environment and Development

WRAP -- Waste Reduction Always Pays -- Waste reduction always pays off.

Introduction

Get more with less

Exciting prospects for progress

In a few words, "factor four" means that resource productivity can and should quadruple. The wealth extracted from one unit of natural resources can quadruple. Thus, we can live twice as well and at the same time spend half as much.

This idea is both new and simple.

It is new because it heralds nothing more than a new direction of scientific and technological progress. In the past, progress has been about increasing productivity. We believe that resource performance is just as important and should be treated as a top priority.

The idea is also exciting. Some aspects of this revolution in efficiency are already being realized at lower costs, ie. can be used to advantage. Countries that revolutionize efficiency win in international competition.

The revolutionary rise in efficiency is sure to become a global trend. As is always the case with new opportunities, who paves the way in a new direction reaps the greatest harvest.

Moral and material reasons

Otherwise, the world may face unprecedented disasters and catastrophes. Is it possible to cross such a gigantic abyss at all? You can, thanks to Factor Four.

The countries that start first will benefit the most. Countries that hesitate are likely to suffer huge losses in their capital, which will be quickly depleted away from the main routes of resource efficiency.

Treating the Disease of Waste with Efficiency

Efficiency treatment

Seven Arguments for Efficient Use of Resources

The moral and material reasons we have given for moving towards efficiency may seem somewhat abstract. Now we will be more specific, pointing out seven reasons for doing just that.

Get profit. Efficient use of resources usually pays off: you don't have to pay for resources now, and because they don't become pollutants, you don't have to pay to clean them up later.

What's new in efficiency?