Amory Lovins
Comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
In 1995, Amory Lovins wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission commenting on the proposed rulemaking on open access transmission. His primary concern in the proposed rule was the treatment of demand-side options (end-use efficiency and load management) and the potential for new dispersed generators…
Apples, Oranges, and Horned Toads
This article, published in The Electricity Journal, is Amory Lovins’ response to Paul Joskow & Donald Marron’s criticism of utility demand-side management programs. Joskow and Marron are critical of RMI’s stated costs of potential electric end-use efficiency. In the article, Lovins explains the differences in RMI’s technical-potential analyses and Joskow…
Energy Efficient Buildings: Institutional Barriers and Opportunities
In this 1992 paper, Amory Lovins explains that buildings are rarely built to use energy efficiently, despite the sizeable costs that inefficient designs impose on building owners, occupants, and the utility companies that serve them. The reasons for this massive market failure have to do with the institutional framework within…
Negawatt Revolution: Electric Efficiency and Asian Development
This paper, published in 1991 in the Far Eastern Economic Review, compares electricity use by electric utilities customers in the far Eastern countries with use by customers in the United States. The comparison reveals very different patterns of use in the regions, which are largely influenced by electric utility pricing.
Lessons from Iraq
This letter was written at the time of the first Gulf War in 1991. In the technical letter sent to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Amory Lovins corrects misstatements about the critical ingredients needed to make active nuclear weapons. Lovins’ calculations reveal previously unexplored implications about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities…