Reinventing Fire

This document is a technical guide and methodology supplement for the book 'Reinventing Fire', published by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI). It outlines a roadmap for transitioning the United States energy system from oil and coal to efficiency and renewables by 2050, emphasizing a business-led, profit-driven approach that avoids reliance on new inventions or legislative acts.

• The 'Reinventing Fire' roadmap proposes a complete shift of the United States energy system from oil and coal to renewables and efficiency by 2050, with natural gas use eliminated later. This transition is estimated to cost $5 trillion less in net-present-value than a business-as-usual scenario, excluding hidden costs, and is designed to be led by the private sector for profit without requiring new Acts of Congress or inventions.
• The analysis employs a holistic and integrative approach across four energy-using sectors: transportation, buildings, industry, and electricity generation. It further integrates four types of innovation: strategy, policy, design, and technology.
• To maintain conservatism, the roadmap only assumes technologies that are already in the market or in the commercialization pipeline. It also adopts official government growth projections for 2050, which include increases in driving (90%), trucking (118%), flying (61%), floorspace use (70%), and manufacturing (84%), as well as a Gross Domestic Product increase of 2.58 times the 2010 level.
• The methodology uses the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Reference Case from January 2010 as its base case, extrapolating 2035 forecasts linearly to 2050. The analysis ensures that economic growth and activity levels remain consistent with EIA inputs so that differences in outcomes result solely from different supply and energy efficiency patterns.
• The study calculates Internal Rates of Return (IRR) for various sectors, averaging 14% overall. Specific sector averages include 33% for buildings, 21% for industry, and 17% for transportation.
• The analysis uses a 'Cost of Saved Energy' (CSE) metric to evaluate efficiency, which is the marginal cost of the more efficient device divided by its discounted lifetime energy savings. This allows efficiency to be treated as a supply curve, where cost-effectiveness is determined by whether the CSE is lower than the cost of the energy being saved.

APA

RMI (2011). Reinventing Fire. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2012-10_RFGeneralMethodology.pdf

Chicago

RMI. Reinventing Fire. 2011. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2012-10_RFGeneralMethodology.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Reinventing Fire |date=2011 |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2012-10_RFGeneralMethodology.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2011reinventing, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Reinventing Fire}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2011}, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2012-10_RFGeneralMethodology.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }