''Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security'' is a 1982 book by
Amory B. Lovins and L.
Hunter Lovins
L. Hunter Lovins (née Sheldon, born February 26, 1950, in Middlebury, Vermont) is an American environmentalist, author, sustainable development proponent, co-founder of Rocky Mountain Institute, and president of the nonprofit organization Natu ...
, prepared originally as a
Pentagon
In geometry, a pentagon () is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple polygon, simple pentagon is 540°.
A pentagon may be simple or list of self-intersecting polygons, self-intersecting. A self-intersecting ...
study and re-released in 2001 following the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
. The book argues that the U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, whether by accident or malice, often even more so than US technology is vulnerable to disruption of the imported oil supply. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, and is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy.
In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current.
Vulnerability to large-scale failures
Lovins argues that the United States has for decades been running on energy that is "brittle" (easily shattered by accident or malice) and that this poses a grave and growing threat to
national security
National security, or national defence (national defense in American English), is the security and Defence (military), defence of a sovereign state, including its Citizenship, citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of ...
, life, and liberty.
Lovins explains that this danger comes not from hostile ideology but from misapplied technology. The size, complexity, pattern, and control structure of the electrical power system makes it ''inherently'' vulnerable to large-scale failures. The same is true of the technologies that deliver coal, gas, and oil for running buildings, vehicles, and industries. Reliance on these delicately poised energy systems has unwittingly put at risk the entire
American way of life.
Lovins' detailed research shows that these vulnerabilities are increasingly being exploited. ''Brittle Power'' documents many significant assaults on energy facilities, other than during a war, in 40 countries and within the United States, in some 24 states.
Resilient energy systems
Lovins claims that most energy utilities and governments are unsuccessfully trying to build high technical reliability into power plants so large that their cost of failure is unacceptable. A resilient energy supply system may instead consist of numerous, relatively small sustainable energy sources, each with a low individual cost of failure. Potentially these individual energy sources "are ''renewable'': they harness the energy of the sun, wind, water, or farm and forestry wastes, rather than that of depletable fuels".
Central message
Amory B. and L. Hunter Lovins reiterated the main message of ''Brittle Power'' in "Terrorism and Brittle Technology", Chapter 3 in Albert H. Teich's book ''Technology and the Future'' (2003):
The foundation of a secure energy system is to need less energy in the first place, then to get it from sources that are inherently invulnerable because they're diverse, dispersed, renewable, and mainly local. They're secure not because they're American but because of their design. Any highly centralised energy system – pipelines, nuclear plants, refineries – invites devastating attack. But invulnerable alternatives don't, and can't, fail on a large scale.
Networked island-able microgrids
In his book ''
Reinventing Fire'' (2011), Amory B. Lovins puts forward a vision of networked island-able microgrids where energy is generated locally from
solar power
Solar power, also known as solar electricity, is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV) or indirectly using concentrated solar power. Solar panels use the photovoltaic effect to c ...
,
wind power
Wind power is the use of wind energy to generate useful work. Historically, wind power was used by sails, windmills and windpumps, but today it is mostly used to generate electricity. This article deals only with wind power for electricity ge ...
, and other resources, and used by super-efficient buildings. When each building, or neighborhood, is generating its own power, with links to other “islands” of power, the security of the entire network is greatly enhanced.
[ Lovins has said that in the face of hundreds of blackouts in 2005, Cuba reorganized its electricity transmission system into networked microgrids and cut the occurrence of blackouts to zero within two years, limiting damage even after two hurricanes.][Lund, Per.]
The Cell Controller Pilot Project
" '' Energinet.dk'', 12 October 2012.
See also
Major blackouts
Related publications
Related concepts
Further reading
''Brittle Power'' has 1,200 references. It has been summarised and referred to in several other publications:
* Lay summary.
* Book chapter written for security professionals.
*
References
External links
* Document ID: IC#4.
* Document ID: E03-06.
{{Amory Lovins
1982 in the environment
Books by Amory Lovins
Books about energy issues
Electric power
Environmental non-fiction books