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Getting Off Oil: Recent Leaps, Next Steps

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by Amory Lovins In mid-2005, Rocky Mountain Institute launched a three-year effort to implement the ideas in our book, Winning the Oil Endgame – our detailed 2004 roadmap for getting the U.S completely off oil by the 2040s, without needing new taxes, subsidies, mandates, or federal laws. We felt this $3.6-million effort could be led by business for profit, because saving or displacing oil would cost only $15 per barrel (in 2000 dollars)-far below oil’s price. It might seem foolish to expect to shift such gigantic sectors as oil and cars. But by taking markets seriously, we saw leverage in "institutional acupuncture": find meridians and points where the business logic is congested and not flowing properly, then stick needles into carefully chosen sites to get it flowing. Some farsighted donors and foundations backed this ambitious experiment. Two and a half years later, it has exceeded expectations. Of the six sectors that must change to set the United States firmly on the journey beyond oil, I believe at least three, perhaps four, have already passed the "tipping point" beyond which the major efforts still required will become ever easier. The hardest and slowest sector is cars. But building on 17 years […]

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The Greening of Wal-Mart

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In 1989, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. launched one of the first major retail campaigns to sell environmentally safe products in recyclable or biodegradable packaging. The corporation promoted these products by labeling them with green-colored shelf tags. Although there were over 300 green products at its peak, Wal-Mart didn’t directly set or monitor supplier environmental standards. This resulted in negative publicity for Wal-Mart when the public learned that a green-labeled brand of paper towels had only a recycled tube – the towels were virgin paper treated with chlorine bleach! The green tag program waned, and by the mid-1990s environmental issues seemed to have slipped off the company’s list of priorities. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart’s reputation among consumers was also slipping. Issues surrounding its competitive practices and labor policies loomed large in the public eye. The company’s environmental record was nothing to boast about, either. Indeed, a 2005 McKinsey & Company study found that 2-8% of customers had stopped shopping at Wal-Mart because of the company’s practices. Against this backdrop, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. unveiled a new plan to reduce the company’s environmental footprint. In an October 2005 speech broadcast to all 1.6 million employees in all 6,000-plus stores and shared with some […]

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