Reinventing Fire

The document describes the framework for 'Reinventing Fire', a roadmap to shift the U.S. energy system to efficiency and renewables by 2050. It emphasizes a business-led, profit-driven approach that integrates transportation, buildings, industry, and electricity. The methodology relies on a base case from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), utilizes stock-and-flow models for technology adoption, and applies sector-specific real hurdle rates for investment screening. The analysis is intentionally conservative, assuming only technologies already entering the market and ignoring positive externalities to ensure a rigorous, independent perspective.

• The 'Reinventing Fire' roadmap proposes a complete transition of the United States energy system from oil and coal to renewables and efficiency by 2050, with natural gas eliminated later. This transition is estimated to cost $5 trillion less in net-present-value than a business-as-usual scenario, requires no new Acts of Congress or inventions, and is designed to be led by the private sector for profit.
• The analysis employs a holistic integration strategy across four energy-using sectors—transportation, buildings, industry, and electricity generation—and four innovation types: technology, design, policy, and strategy. This approach is based on the premise that solving these problems together is more effective than addressing them separately.
• The methodology uses the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) January 2010 Energy Outlook as its Reference Case. To maintain consistency, the authors extrapolated EIA forecasts linearly to 2050 and adopted EIA's economic growth and activity levels to ensure that differences in outcomes result solely from different energy efficiency and supply patterns.
• Investment screening is conducted using sector-specific real hurdle rates: 15% for trucking, 12% for industry, 7% for buildings, 5.7% for electric utilities, and 3% for airplanes, with a three-year simple-payback horizon for new automobiles. The calculated average Internal Rates of Return are 33% in buildings, 21% in industry, 17% in transportation, and 14% overall.
• The analysis is intentionally conservative in several ways: it only includes technologies already in or entering the commercialization pipeline, assumes no lifestyle changes that would reduce convenience, and omits certain energy-saving options like cogeneration in buildings and solar process heat in industry.
• The authors explicitly exclude externalities from their private internal cost framing, treating both negative costs (such as carbon emissions, oil spills, and smog-induced disease) and positive externalities (such as increased labor productivity in efficient buildings) as having zero value.

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} }