Tunneling Through the Cost Barrier Summary and Analysis

The chapter opens with a discussion of the value of good training for engineers like Eng Lock Lee, who are in the mindset of rethinking everything to make it as efficient as possible, and the tremendous difference that can be made when they are educated in that way, and that can affect whole industries' philosophies. The premise in "Tunneling Through the Cost Barrier" is that, while the law of diminishing returns says there comes a point at which making a heating unit, for example, more efficient becomes more expensive than its savings will ever pay for, by shifting the way we think and investing in insulation instead, the cost barrier is circumvented by way of requiring a much, much smaller heater as a result. Engineers must let go of the assumption that one...