To the distress of Amory Lovins, news of the efficiency revolution has not reached Washington, where the political power and PAC money of the supply side are well entrenched. Certainly some of the reluctance to brandish the banner of efficiency comes from the connotation of scarcity and doing-without that energy conservation acquired when President Carter lowered the White House thermostat and donned his infamous cardigan.

President Reagan understood conservation to mean being hotter in summer and colder in winter. In 1980 the Solar Energy Research Institute made the first comprehensive government study of what the country could save with an approach that maximized renewable energy sources and energy efficiency. The draft was finished as Reagan was assuming power, and one of the first acts of his new regime was to try to shut down the study and suppress the results. Staff members stayed all night photocopying the draft and mailing it out before the order could be effected.

"The potential for energy savings was so huge that we had one scenario in which the U.S. could join OPEC," recalls Karl Gawell, former project director for the SERI study and now an energy aide for Senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota).

To Lovins, efficiency never entailed life-style compromises. Efficiency meant doing more with less. Efficiency meant saving money, and it should have appealed to free-market Republicans, except that where energy was concerned, free-market Republicans often behaved, in his words, like "corporate socialists."

It's true that federal policymakers in the Bush administration continue to act as if no alternative exists for eliminating the country's dependence on foreign oil—and the need for further military adventures in the Middle East—but to march full speed down the Hard Path beating a 55-gallon supply-side drum. The Bush energy blueprint is embodied in The National Energy Security Act, which was voted out of the Senate Energy Committee in July. Sponsored by Senators Bennett Johnston (D-Louisiana) and Mal­colm Wallop (R-Wyoming), the bill would launch another round of nuclear-power subsidies (now called "incentives"), authorizing "an advanced nuclear reactor," and forgiving the industry's $10 billion debt for uranium-enrichment services. It would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, resume oil exploration and development on the outer continental shelf, weaken the Clean Air Act, and exempt new power plants from emission-control standards.

"We're doing as badly in oil efficiency as we are doing well in elec­tricity," says Lovins. "Technical fixes alone could cut U.S. oil consumption by 80 percent. Each barrel saved would cost you only a few dollars, so it's cheaper to save oil than drill for more, let alone do anything with it if you find some."

"If you want to find the innovation and achievement in efficiency, Washington is the last place to look," says Ralph Cavanagh, energy program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "You have to look at state regulatory agencies and the utilities."

Indeed, far from the Beltway, the heresies of the Soft Path are rapidly becoming the by-words of conventional wisdom. Thanks to costly supply-­side fiascoes, many utilities have discovered that it is cheaper to save energy than to produce it. Between 1981 and 1987, utilities in the Pacific Northwest spent more than $900 million to buy more energy through efficiency measures. What is called end-use/least-cost planning is now in place or under development in 43 states. That means that before new plants are built, lawyers and experts argue before public utility commis­sions over the cheapest way to provide energy services. Environmental costs are being factored into the price of power; some states have severed utility profits from sales, removing a major barrier to saving electricity. At least eight states require projects that will add to the supply of electricity to compete in an open auction against programs designed to save power by improving customers' efficiency. About 60 utilities offer rebates to encourage the buying and selling of energy-efficient appliances. Electrical efficiency has become a $4 billion-a-year business.

California, as usual, is leading the way. Pacific Gas & Electric, the nation's largest private utility, plans to meet at least 75 percent of its needs in the nineties with efficiency programs to hold down demand; the other 25 percent will come from renewables. By last year the amount of electricity consumed per dollar of California's gross product had de­creased 20 percent, flying in the face of the supply-side assumption that economic growth and electricity use rise in lockstep. Utilities in the Northwest, New York, New England, and Wisconsin are finding the equivalent of new power plants in caulk guns and fluorescent bulbs. In California alone, increased efficiency has already saved $23 billion. (Lovins estimates the United States has spent more than $270 billion on unneeded generating capacity.) Since 1979 the United States has gotten seven times as much energy from saving energy as from increasing energy supply. No coal or nuclear plants are under construction in the western United States. "The future has gone over to the mammals," says Ralph Cavanagh. "The dinosaurs no longer roam the earth."

"The energy problem is conceptually solved, but about 50 years of details remain," says Lovins. "The important, elements of the transition are already firmly and irreversibly embedded in the market. Now within the industry, future demand is not fate, but choice. What we had before was a Stalinist planning system where a small group of people would decide how much energy we needed and ram it down our throats whether we needed it or not. The battle's been won in all except a handful of places."

Lovins was once a prophet without honor—utility executives would leave the room when he showed up, and Hans Bethe refused to shake his hand. More recently some of his old adversaries have had second thoughts, and Lovins now has the satisfaction of seeing many facets of energy use unfold according to his numbers. His 1972 estimate of total energy consumption in the year 2000 was, a mere six years later, the industry estimate put forth by Ralph Lapp, one of his staunchest critics.

"I've been reevaluating Amory Lovins," says Charles Yulish. "I think he was very prophetic in many ways and deserves to be revisited. I would not retract 'flaccid and flatulent,' but I should have added that in spite of what he is and the way he says it, there is an irresistible quality to the simpleness of his ideas that ought to be tried."

"We're very close to Amory on the technical potential of efficiency," says Tom Morran of the Edison Electric Institute. "Our disagreement is over the market potential. In our judgment you're still going to have to build a power plant or two."

Lovins himself has grown up some, too. No longer inclined to do the General Nuisance March, he tries to practice what he calls aikido politics, which means that you don't fight with an opponent, you dance with a partner. It's not enough to be right; Lovins wants to get along, to help translate theory into practice. So he spends his days dreaming up ways for utilities to finance investments in efficiency, ways to reform regulations to reward efficient energy use. Perhaps the best tribute both to the wisdom of what was once his heresy and his abiding commitment to the efficiency crusade is RMI's Competitek service—exhaustively researched technical encyclopedias of the latest in energy-efficient lights, motors, air conditioners, heaters, appliances, and office equipment. The series costs $9,000 a throw. And among its many subscribers are more than 70 utilities.