Energy Efficiency, the Bottom Line, and Nuclear Power

The McKinsey Quarterly recently interviewed Amory Lovins, cofounder of the Rocky Mountain Institute. Lovins contends that market forces—not regulation—will provide the key incentive for companies to consume energy more efficiently. Business leaders will be those who drive energy transformation in their sectors. With “traditional environmental regulations…becoming antiquated,” the private market will be a more “responsive, powerful, creative force than public policy, which will continue to play catch-up” as companies seek new ways to improve their energy efficiency—and their bottom line.

In the McKinsey interview, Lovins comments on some of the issues he addresses in a report coauthored with Imran Sheikh and published by the Rocky Mountain Institute. In “The Nuclear Illusion,” Lovins and Sheikh argue that “nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete.” According to these two authors, nuclear power is unviable when it comes to providing a reliable supply of energy and meliorating climate change. Find the case against nuclear power here.