Green Net: The Dematerialization Opportunity

Jonathan Koomey of the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and Stanford is one of the world’s reigning experts on “dematerialization,” which he defines as two things. First, “removing the need to create a physical product.” And second, “the energy savings associated with not having to transport that product.” The dematerialization opportunities may be immense, but it’s not clear what will have the biggest impact — creating new better products, erasing the need for old ones, or modeling behavior in a new way. So the first challenge is to evaluate what changes and innovations will actually make a difference in energy consumption. More>