Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use - The New Report to the Club of Rome [Paperback]

The theme of the book is getting more for less, with the assertion, with copious examples, that the knowledge, technologies and in many cases commercial experience exist to double outcomes while halving resource use across a very wide range of economic activity. Further, these gains are often available very inexpensively and have the potential to yield large increases in profitability as well as in useful outcomes. The report gives examples and then goes on to discuss how to bring about useful change.

A major theme is that the conventional wisdom of both engineering and economics currently work against achieving material and energy productivity, but do not need to do so. There is an underlying theme of the need to change economic incentives and measures within the market system, which goes back at least to Hawken's 1993 The Ecology of Commerce.

The thrust of the book is to demonstrate:

* that, for historical and other reasons the capitalist world is extremely wasteful of resources, particularly materials, energy and transport (effectively another manifestation of energy use), despite the fact that technologies and good examples exist which can lead to dramatic reductions.

* that the failure to take these improvements up is not that they are too costly - in many cases introducing the improvements reduces capital costs - but

- a failure to design or operate systemically,

- the slow accretion in accepted practice (such as car design and manufacture) of 'bells and whistles' that increase weight and energy use but not performance;

- a fixation on reducing labour content at the expense (typically) of increased energy and material consumption through the system; and

- perverse incentives that are built into the economic calculus of business and economic success (including for example externalities).

* that the market is neither a god nor a devil. It is a tool that produces different results according to the guidelines and measures within which it operates. The current guidelines and measures were developed in an era when the natural environment was considered as an inexhaustible 'free good' and need to be changed; and

* that transition to a sustainable world is possible on reasonable assumptions if we all get serious about making use of resource saving technologies and measure our progress in more appropriate ways.

The many examples in Part 1 provide a useful source of ideas for improving economic performance while simultaneously benefiting the environment. The remaining three parts summarize and add to proposals for reconciling corporate, economic and ecological sustainability. Note that, while it is fairly comprehensive in its scope, there are some opportunity areas that it does not explore, such as the scope for 'ecological industrial parks' in which industries are clustered such that the waste of one is economic input for another.

The 'sustainability' literature is often accused of being moralistic and lacking in commercial realism. This book, like The Ecology of Commerce, Natural Capitalism, The Natural Step Story and others offers realistic and practical ways of overcoming waste and using innovative engineering and materials to produce superior value with reduced environmental impact.

Many of the anecdotes related in this book appear again in "Natural Capitalism", a more recent work by Lovins et al. There are enough differences, however, to merit an inspection. The authors have a real knack for research. You'll probably be surprised by some of the facts they lay before you, e.g. 50-100 kg of nitrates fall out of the sky per hectare in central Europe.

I saw this book listed whilst perusing Amazon's catalogue for something entirely different.
Am now so glad I did. "Factor Four" is all about the results of research into effective ways of saving energy at minimal capital cost.

I have invested in the underground air ventilation system and other very smart ways of minimising energy loss. I live in Austria so the points the book makes were very easy to put into practice and to judge by monitoring the power usage from the meter on a monthly basis.

Great value, the knowledge I gained paid for the book in about two months.