Homes, Businesses Plug In to Savings on Power Costs : Conservation: Advocates work to increase awareness, but Bush puts emphasis on fuel production.

The other side of the earth from a war-weary Persian Gulf, an unassuming country home built into a hillside northwest of Aspen has become a showcase of energy-saving technology for the environmentalists, utility executives and regulators who for nearly a decade have trooped through.

Today, the home and office of Amory Lovins--arguably the best-known international advocate of energy conservation--is no longer as eccentric as it once seemed. Its energy-saving features, among them a sheet of greenhouse windows, have become common in American homes.

Indeed, energy conservation is the area where a nation that critics say is only half-heartedly committed to cutting its dependence on foreign oil has made its greatest gains.

But that was always the plan--to make conservation commonplace. Lovins and his wife, Hunter, have kept the front door open to show guests that saving energy doesn’t mean, as he often puts it, an end to “hot showers and cold beer.”

“A third of Americans think that the word conservation in the context of energy means privation, discomfort, curtailment, being hotter in summer, colder in winter,” said Lovins, a Harvard and Oxford-trained physicist.

“Energy efficiency, doing more with less. That’s the word we use,” Lovins said. “In fact, in almost every case, the energy efficiency comes with greatly improved comfort and productivity.

What is comfortable on a gray, chill morning not long after a preliminary cease-fire halted the shooting in the Gulf is the room temperature and the slight smell of fresh earth from the home’s main “furnace,” the central, solar-heated garden, complete with banana tree.

Much of the 4,000-square-foot house, which serves as an office for dozens of staffers of the Lovins’ Rocky Mountain Institute, is heated only by the garden, windows and other high-tech versions of familiar devices--technology that Lovins describes as already antiquated. Even so, the house requires little water and less than a 10th the normal amount of electricity.

Such greatly reduced energy use on a national--and international--scale would dampen world tensions over oil supplies and reduce pressures to extract fossil fuels at home, say Lovins and, lately, almost every expert who has pondered world energy supplies.

But energy-efficient housing is just part of the potential for savings.

In this country, industrial and commercial energy users, as well as major utilities, already have seen the low-energy light, particularly in California.

The Commercial Front

On the commercial front, ideas once thought visionary are now in use:

* Some McDonald’s restaurants boast small co-generating plants, which use excess heat to produce cheap electricity.

* Taco Bell is experimenting with an energy-efficient dehumidifier for its restaurants.

* The Carl’s Jr. chain has adopted high-efficiency lighting and other energy systems to cut its electric bills--with a 40% return on the investment.

* Dozens of companies around the country will assess the energy efficiency of an office building or factory, taking their fees from the savings they produce.

* Mortgages that reward home buyers who install energy-efficient devices may soon be widely available.

* Major manufacturers--including Motorola, Philips Lighting, Andersen Windows, Panasonic and GTE Sylvania--now make, or plan to make, high-efficiency consumer products as a matter of course. These include everything from light bulbs and windows to fax machines.

Meanwhile, substantial savings have already been realized from a wide spectrum of energy-efficient schemes: raising fuel-economy standards for vehicles, installing thriftier motors and lights, even restructuring how public utilities take their profits from energy production.

According to Lovins, energy-efficiency measures already save the United States $150 billion a year--trimming as much as a quarter from a national energy bill that would otherwise run $600 billion or more.

The estimate has credence. A report from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, released in January, states that while the nation’s progress in energy efficiency has been “stagnant” in the last six years, energy use has increased only 8% since 1973. Given that the gross national product increased 46% over the same period, the figures indicate substantial energy savings.

The future is less clear.

The Outlook

The Oak Ridge study sees a 12% increase in energy efficiency by the year 2010, if fuel prices rise as predicted, and 14% in additional savings with “extensive policy changes.”

Yet Lovins and others believe that much more could be done--that another $300 billion annually, roughly the size of the peacetime military budget, could be cut from U.S. energy consumption.

In fact, the United States lags behind most industrial nations in energy efficiency, being roughly half as efficient as Japan and two-thirds as efficient as the former West Germany. Both countries have heavy taxes on gasoline. But more important, say conservation proponents, their industries have long seen energy efficiency as vital to international competitiveness.

And so environmentalists, consumer advocates and a surprisingly vigorous segment of the energy industry were disappointed that the Bush Administration’s National Energy Strategy generally emphasizes new energy production--from such controversial sources as nuclear plants and new oil wells in the Alaskan wilderness and offshore--over conservation.

“If the NES had taken economics seriously and done the cheapest things first, it would have been very good,” says Lovins.

For years, many energy experts have argued that saving energy is easier and cheaper than developing new sources--and that the technology to conserve already exists. While this notion had some early popularity with Jimmy Carter Administration planners, the Ronald Reagan White House’s attitude was best captured by a comment of then-Energy Secretary James B. Edwards: that we can’t conserve ourselves into prosperity.

Lately, critics of greater support for energy-efficiency have expressed worry about the economic disruption they say would inevitably come with change--particularly if conservation is prodded by such government moves as tightening vehicle fuel-economy standards.

“We need a national energy policy that is aimed at getting on with the job of producing more oil and gas here at home, to turn the wheels of industry and agriculture,” Sen. Phil Gramm, a Republican from oil-rich Texas, said in a television interview less than a month after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

“Conservation has got to be part of it, too,” Gramm said. “But we need a balanced policy, and we can’t act as if just simply passing a law saying that we’ll raise energy standards on cars to 40 miles a gallon isn’t costly. Such a change would cost tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

The Bush energy plan calls for using market forces, more than regulation, to encourage conservation and for more research into energy-efficient technology.

“I’d rather solve problems with technology than regulation,” says J. Michael Davis, assistant secretary of energy for conservation and renewable energy.

But efficiency advocates say that, like the Lovins’ house, most of the necessary technology and economic strategies have been around for years. They also say that the costs of switching to energy-efficiency are usually overstated by skeptics and that the pay-back period from savings can be surprisingly short--particularly when compared with the high capital costs of, for instance, building nuclear power plants.

Lovins, for instance, says that his home’s $9,000 investment in high-efficiency devices paid for itself in savings 10 months after the one-story, rock-walled house was built.

What advocates want is not more research, but the tangible support of government.

The one federal program praised by efficiency backers is the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Green Lights” effort to encourage a voluntary shift to more efficient lighting by the nation’s largest companies. Its goal is to cut the companies’ electricity use by 10%.

Given lukewarm federal support for conservation programs, environmentalists are now placing great hope in a project recently begun by Pacific Gas & Electric, the San Francisco-based utility. In January, the firm launched an unprecedented, 10-year, $2-billion energy-saving effort.

Using 30 programs to help customers reduce electricity and natural gas use, the company expects to meet three-quarters of its new energy demand in the next decade through conservation. Crucial will be demonstrations of the best available technologies in down-to-earth situations.

“If it works, it will change everything,” says Peter Schwartz, former head of business planning for Royal Dutch/Shell Group who now runs Berkeley-based Global Business Network Inc., a consulting firm. “This is vastly more ambitious than the federal government’s commitment.”

PG&E;’s effort is a dramatic extension of conservation programs under way since the mid-1970s in California, which has lowered its energy use in the period while the nation as a whole has continued to use more. Largely responsible have been the tough state efficiency standards for buildings and appliances.

Meanwhile, rate-restructuring by the California Energy Commission and state Public Utilities Commission has made it profitable for the state’s big investor-owned utilities--PG&E;, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas--to save energy.

The key concept is the so-called “negawatt.” It is cheaper, and less environmentally damaging, to save a watt of energy than to create one, energy experts say--and thus watts and negawatts should be considered at least equal in value.

In practical terms, utilities can produce negawatts by, for instance, distributing high-efficiency light bulbs to customers--reducing their demand for electricity--instead of building another power plant. Edison recently gave away its 1-millionth no-cost, high-efficiency, fluorescent light bulb to low-income customers; the utility offers a $5 rebate on the bulbs to all its customers.

Not all efficiency schemes are so far advanced.

Mortgages that encourage the building and retrofitting of energy-efficient homes have not yet caught on. The basic idea: If buyers are willing to increase their mortgages--taking out cash to pay for better insulation and the like--they should qualify for the larger loans, since their monthly utility bills will be lower.

These mortgages have been available through a half-dozen state and federal agencies since 1980. Yet they are still so unknown that most real estate agents and banks remain suspicious of them.

Jim Curtis, of Bay Area Energy Consultants in Palo Alto, estimates that last year, the four California contractors actively promoting the idea saw only 2,000 such mortgages signed--out of 600,000 opportunities.

“It’s a small, small tip of the iceberg,” says Curtis, who blames disinterest on low public awareness and the lack of uniformity among the agencies’ mortgage programs, making lenders reluctant to deal with them.

But advocates like Lovins see these setbacks as mere dawdlers in the greater shift to efficiency--and to a time when energy savings will be recognized values in the market economy.

The goal is “to make energy into a commodity--just like copper, wheat and sow bellies--with all the behaviors that attend efficient commodity markets,” says Lovins, who with a smile describes himself as a conservative economist. “And it’s amazing how fast that’s happening.”

ENERGY-SAVING TIPS AT HOME

Get an energy audit. Many utilities--including Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Gas and Pacific Gas & Electric will send an inspector at no charge to tell you how you can cut energy use in your home.

Use caulk, insulation or weatherstripping to seal holes that allow air to rise or leak out of a room, including holes where electrical wires enter ceiling fixtures.

Be sure that pet doors, dryer exhaust vents and other openings close and seal properly.

Insulate ceilings and walls. A depth of 10 to 18 inches is recommended for attic insulation.

Consider heat-recovery ventilators, also known as air-to-air heat exchangers, for ventilation. If properly installed, they can retain 60% to 80% of household heat.

Wrap the water heater in an insulation blanket and lower the thermostat to 120 F. Insulate any accessible hot water pipes, too.

Close your window curtains at night. Consider do-it-yourself, heat-shrink plastic heat barriers applied directly to the glass or storm windows.

Replace windows, as appropriate, with so-called super windows, with insulating values of R-6 or R-7. While they cost about 40% more than ordinary double-panes, they give three to four times the insulating effect.

Change or clean forced-air heater filters once a month during winter. Install a set-back furnace thermostat, which lowers the house temperature automatically when you sleep or go to work.

For cooling, install a whole-house fan that vents hot air into the attic. Use ceiling, paddle or portable fans, then raise the air conditioner thermostat a few degrees. It’s a myth that it’s cheaper to leave the air conditioning on when you’re not at home, instead of re-cooling the house when you return. Keep windows tight and shades drawn, and the house will retain coolness longer than you expect.

Buy the new generation of high-efficiency appliances. Dishwashers with water-booster heaters are especially good for getting food off plates without pre-rinsing. Front-load clothes washers are generally twice as efficient as top-loaders.

Have the gas company turn off your gas range-top’s pilot light--though not the oven’s. Lighting the burners with a match can save 25% to 50% of the gas used by your stove.

Wash full loads of clothing. Use warm water to wash, cold to rinse.

Replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps.

Source: Rocky Mountain Institute

THE LANDMARK LOVINS HOUSE

Energy conservation advocate Amory Lovins built his rock-walled home-office eight years ago. Since then, some of its most innovative features have become commonplace. Here are some of its energy-efficient systems, with the savings compared to ordinary systems:

WINDOWS: Argon gas-filled heat barrier windows have twice the efficiency of triple glazing.

WALLS: Walls of four-inch polyurethane have insulation between two six-inch uprights of masonry.

LIGHTING: A microcomputer controls kitchen fluorescent lights, saving 70% to 90%. A photocell adjusts kitchen lights as daylight changes.

HEATING: Cantilevered greenhouse arch provides for a heat-producing garden. Air-to-air heat exchangers save 75% to 80%.

LAUNDRY: Solar clothes-drying closet saves 90%.

REFRIGERATOR: Hybrid model saves 95%. Super-efficient freezer saves about 85%.

WATER HEATER: Solar domestic water heating.

BATHROOM: Half-gallon-per-minute compressed air showers (save 72% to 93% of the water). Four-liter toilet (saves 70 to 87% of water).

HOT-TUB: Solar and wood-heated.

OFFICE: Low-energy photocopier.