Questions for Efficient Design

On December 22, 2007 Mr. Lovins contributed the following questions to QuestionsForLiving®.

QFL:
Do you have a universal, or common, set of questions which you ask yourself when designing any new creation (be it a physical structure, engineering solution, or improved processes)?

Mr. Lovins's answer:

• What are we trying to achieve, and what's the cheapest way?
• How can our design imitate nature's solutions?
• How many systems, subsystems, and parts can be eliminated?
• How can each remaining one do as many duties as possible (at least three)?
• How can we gain efficiency leverage by starting our savings downstream, turning compounding losses (from energy source to end-use) around backwards into compounding savings? [See my lectures on advanced energy efficiency at www.rmi.org/stanford]

QFL:
What were the primary questions which you asked yourself in the design of your house in Colorado? (If you have more than one house, I am referring to the one in which banana trees can survive/ grow year round.)

Mr. Lovins's answer:

• Would it be feasible to eliminate the usual furnace in a climate that can drop to -44C (-47F), have frost any day of the year, and have 39 continuous days of midwinter cloud?
• Might this approach reduce total net capital cost (because superinsulation, superwindows, air-to-air heat exchangers, etc. cost less than the furnace, ducts, fans, pipes, pumps, wires, controls, and fuel-supply arrangements)?
• Could the building be made as efficient electrically as thermally, saving ~90% of normal usage?
• Could it be ~99% thermally passive, maintaining comfort without controls?
• Could it use solar heat for ~99% of its water-heating energy by using a stratified quasi-seasonal storage tank?
• How could integrative whole-building design improve human health, happiness, and productivity? [Answer was yes to all, with a 10-month payback in 1983. See Visitors' Guide, RMI Publication H-1, at www.rmi.org, and virtual tour there.]

QFL:
If you do have a universal set of questions, which you ask yourself in the design of any new creation, please list the three to five questions which you find to be most useful.

Mr. Lovins's answer:

I especially enjoy these design quotations:

• You can only get to simplicity through complexity. - Anon.
• Everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler. - Einstein
• I wouldn't give a nickel for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I'd give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity. - Einstein
• Perfect simplicity is not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away. - St.Exupéry
• How did I sculpt David? I just chiseled away everything that wasn't David. - Michaelangelo
• Seek the pattern that connects. - Bateson
• You know you're on the right track when your solution for one problem accidentally solves several others. - Corbet
• Avoiding problems is even better than solving them. - Lovins
• All the really important design errors are made on the first day. - Design proverb
  

Amory B. Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist, is a consultant experimental physicist educated at Harvard and Oxford. He has received an Oxford MA (by virtue of being a don), nine honorary doctorates, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Heinz, Lindbergh, Right Livelihood ("Alternative Nobel"), World Technology, and Time Hero for the Planet awards, the Benjamin Franklin and Happold Medals, the Nissan, Shingo, Mitchell, and Onassis Prizes, and honorary membership of the American Institute of Architects. He has lately led the redesign of $30 billion worth of facilities in 29 sectors for radical energy and resource efficiency. He has briefed nineteen heads of state, held several visiting academic chairs (most recently the 2007 MAP/Ming Professorship at Stanford), written twenty-nine books and hundreds of papers, and consulted for scores of industries and governments worldwide. The Wall Street Journal named Mr. Lovins one of thirty-nine people worldwide "most likely to change the course of business in the '90s"; Newsweek has praised him as "one of the Western world's most influential energy thinkers"; and Car magazine ranked him the twenty-second most powerful person in the global automotive industry.

 

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