From Green Trust, the free encyclopedia.
It hasn't yet made it into the Webster's Dictionary, but you will find the following definition of
Negawatt (n) - a measure of energy efficiency; a unit in watts of energy saved.
"Negawatt" and the following quotes on the internet:
"Every Negawatt generated has the potential to increase our wealth and health as few other investments can. Negawatts enable us to do more with less and the opportunities are almost boundless. Energy efficiency is the great new energy resource of our future and a vital key to a sustainable environment."
The word "Negawatt" was coined by Amory Lovins, a Harvard and Oxford-educated experimental physicist who is CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute and a Time Magazine "Hero of the Planet". In 1989 Lovins gave the keynote address at a Green Energy Conference in Montreal. You can read this fascinating address on the web; it is called "The Negawatt Revolution: Solving the CO2 problem".
Lovins makes the case , very persuasively, that enormous amounts of energy are wasted in North America. ($300 billion per year in the U.S. and $30 billion per year in Canada) By increasing our energy efficiency we can "generate" large amounts of power without building any new power plants or buying any fuel for existing plants.
