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e-FFICIENCY NEWS: As a lifetime scientist and former student of Professor Fermi, how much does it mean to you to receive the Enrico Fermi Award? ROSENFELD: Personally, I’m honored and incredulous. I worked with Professor Fermi for six years, both as a teacher’s assistant and then as a grad student. I was around when this special award was presented to him in 1954, even before it was named the Fermi Award. I was also around in 1987 when it was presented to Luis Alvarez, who had, for over 30 years, been my 2nd boss and mentor. I’m privileged even to be included on the list of distinguished Award recipients, among them many of the giants of U.S. physics. Professionally, it’s gratifying to see the Department of Energy giving an award for using less and less energy. We of course need to address both demand and supply. But this is encouraging institutional adaptability to award a prize whose original wording was “for the control and use of nuclear energy,” long before energy efficiency was valued as a national imperative. e-FFICIENCY NEWS: You started your career as a physicist and spent 18 years developing, measuring and analyzing particles. What made you decide to redirect your focus to include energy savings and energy efficiency specifically? ROSENFELD: When the first gasoline shortage struck, I knew only two facts about energy use: (a) The developed countries were expected to burn up half the world’s oil in my generation (it seemed rather selfish); and (b) European energy “intensities” [energy use per dollar of gross domestic product] were only about half of ours, yet they had a comparable standard of living. I noted that if we Americans used energy as efficiently as do the Europeans or Japanese, we would have been exporting oil in 1973, so OPEC would have posed little threat to the U.S. economy. I quickly discovered that many of my physicist friends had independently concluded that it would be more profitable to attack our own wasteful energy use than to attack OPEC. In the summer of 1974, I helped organize a 1-month study on efficient use of energy at Princeton. Once convened, it took us only a few days to understand why we in the United States used so much energy; oil and gas were as cheap as dirt or water, and so they were treated like dirt or water. By the end of the first week, we realized that we were discovering (or had blundered into) a huge oil and gas field buried in our cities (buildings), factories, and roads (cars), which could be “extracted” at pennies per gallon of gasoline equivalent. This, of course, was the principle and practice of energy efficiency. It quickly became clear to me there existed real, practical opportunities and possibilities to benefit the country, economy and standard of living. And at least at this point, in 1974, these possibilities seemed endless. e-FFICIENCY NEWS: You’ve been called a “founding father” of energy efficiency; can you talk about some of your achievements? ROSENFELD: I will talk about this in terms of products and policy. In 1975, I formed the Center for Building Science (CBS) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and led it until 1994. The Center developed three products that significantly improved the efficiency of our buildings sector. First were electronic ballasts for fluorescent lamps, which essentially jumpstarted the compact fluorescent light bulb and improved lighting efficiency by 400%. The team at CBS also developed low-emissivity windows. This consisted of depositing a thin, transparent film on one of the interior surfaces of a double-glazed window. This film is a mirror to heat (techically to near-infrared radiation). In winter the film prevents heat from leaking out through the window; in summer it prevents outdoor heat from leaking indoors. These windows are used today all over the world. . At the time we estimated the energy savings from these windows, when applied to US buildings (commercial buildings and homes) would be the equivalent of one-half of Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay oil production. Finally, I was personally responsible for developing the DOE-2 computer program, which is now used for the energy design of most US buildings and for buildings standards adopted throughout the US, and as a “compliance tool” for enforcing those standards. In terms of policies, I have always pushed for the establishment and enforcement of building and appliance codes and standards in as many states and countries as possible. I believe in pushing for profitability for utilities for advancing energy efficiency so that it’s possible to align the utilities’ interests with those of the consumer. I was part of a study group conducted by the National Association of Regulatory Commissioners (NARUC) where we coined the phrase that “a utility’s least revenue policy should be its most profitable policy”. Finally, I have campaigned to raise the energy efficiency budgets of organizations like the California utilities or the Energy Trust of Oregon, to continue to give incentives and technical assistance to reduce energy use. e-FFICIENCY NEWS: The country seems to be heading towards an energy crossroads. With fuel prices hovering at near record levels and an extremely uncertain geopolitical situation currently surrounding world supply, it would appear that drilling our way out of this problem simply is not an option. What do you see as the most promising solution, policy, or technology, to high energy prices, wasteful energy practices and limited supply options? ROSENFELD: I think a good start would be to increase our domestic focus on energy efficiency. Personally, I’d like to see Congress tighten our Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which have languished since 1985. As I mentioned earlier, we must make energy efficiency profitable for investor-owned utilities. Decoupling profits from sales is the first step towards this. Other options include encouraging better land use planning through the increased use of public transportation and working with American utilities to educate developing nations about the benefits of building codes, appliance standards and incentive programs. These efforts will go a long way toward stabilizing global supply and demand problems. e-FFICIENCY NEWS: There’s a lot of talk about the gains made to date as a result of efficiency. In your opinion, how much potential is left? And is it (will it be) enough to meet U.S and/or global demand? ROSENFELD: There is plenty of potential left. For our economy as a whole our energy intensity has nearly halved since 1973. Even with this gain, the US energy bill last year was $1 trillion. Without these intensity/efficiency gains (or more precisely with slow gains from conducting business as usual), our total bill would be have been $1.7 trillion - so we’re saving $700 billion per year. Another dramatic way to express efficiency gains is to point out that since 1973, three quarters of our new energy services have been supplied by better energy efficiency (homegrown intelligence), and only one quarter by new physical supply. If you want to talk about potential, look at China. In 2000 China adopted efficiency standards for refrigerators and air conditioners. After 10 years of sales, these standards have saved nearly as much energy per year as will be produced by the Three Gorges dam (18,000 MW), currently the World’s largest construction project. e-FFICIENCY NEWS: Finally, what would you consider your greatest contribution to the study and advancement of energy efficiency? ROSENFELD: I am particularly proud that my research and implementation of improved technology and smarter policies in California has gained traction and spread throughout the US as well as overseas. California has maintained a constant electricity-use-per-person for over 30 years, even though homes and offices are bigger, and appliances are larger, more complex and more numerous. The rest of the US, on the other hand, has been less aggressive and energy use per capita has risen 60%. By avoiding this 60% increase, California is currently saving over $1000 per family every year. In addition, in terms of greenhouse gases and pollution, we’ve removed the equivalent of 14 million cars from circulation. Regarding climate change, Tom Friedman recently wrote that China seems to be the problem and California offers the solution. Yes, I’m proud of that and I think I have contributed to that solution in some way. |
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Dr. Arthur “Art” Rosenfeld was recently awarded the Enrico Fermi Award for a lifetime of achievements in science, technology, and public policy for energy conservation and energy efficiency. He was an early leader in the movement to make the United States more energy efficient and pioneered numerous processes and technologies that have yielded billions of dollars in annual savings. e-FFICIENCY NEWS was thankful for the opportunity to discuss Dr. Rosenfeld’s extensive career, his thoughts about the current energy climate and his receipt of the Enrico Fermi Award.