Physicist Amory Lovins (1947– ) is Cofounder (1982) and Chairman Emeritus of Rocky Mountain Institute, which he served as Chief Scientist 2007–19 and now supports as a contractor and Trustee; energy advisor to major firms and governments in 70+ countries for 45+ years; author of 31 books and more than 700 papers; and an integrative designer of superefficient buildings, factories, and vehicles.
He has received the Blue Planet, Volvo, Zayed, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, and Mitchell Prizes, the MacArthur and Ashoka Fellowships, the Happold, Benjamin Franklin, and Spencer Hutchens Medals, 12 honorary doctorates, and the Heinz, Lindbergh, Right Livelihood (“alternative Nobel”), National Design, and World Technology Awards. In 2016, the President of Germany awarded him the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz 1. Klasse).
A Harvard and Oxford dropout and former Oxford don, he’s an honorary US architect, Swedish engineering academician, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (UK). He has taught at ten universities, most recently the Naval Postgraduate School (Professor of Practice 2011–17) and Stanford University, where he’s currently Adjunct Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a Scholar of the Precourt Institute for Energy—but only teaching topics he’s never formally studied, so as to retain beginner’s mind. He served in 2011–18 on the National Petroleum Council and has advised the US Departments of Energy and Defense.
Time has named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people, and Foreign Policy, one of the 100 top global thinkers. His latest books, mostly coauthored, include Natural Capitalism (1999, www.natcap.org), Small Is Profitable (2002, www.smallisprofitable.org), Winning the Oil Endgame (2004, www.oilendgame.com), The Essential Amory Lovins (2011), and Reinventing Fire (2011, www.reinventingfire.com).
His main recent efforts include supporting RMI’s collaborative synthesis, for China’s National Development and Reform Commission, of an ambitious efficiency-and-renewables trajectory that informed the 13th Five Year Plan; helping the Government of India design transformational mobility; and exploring how to make integrative design the new normal, so investments to energy efficiency can yield increasing rather than diminishing returns.
His avocations include fine-art mountain and landscape photography (www.judyhill.com), writing, music, linguistics, great-ape language and conservation, and Taoism.
Basalt, CO
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In this letter, Amory Lovins responds to the wave of recent news on the Senate Armed Services Committee’s disappointing vote to limit the U.S. Department of Defense from pursuing their ambitious alternative fuels strategy. The Senate Armed Services Committee, echoing the House, recently voted 13–12 forbidding the…
Green Footstep is an online assessment tool for reducing carbon emissions from building construction projects and is publicly available at greenfootstep.org. The Green Footstep tool guides the user through the process of life cycle carbon assessment, and then reveals how users can theoretically reduce the net carbon emissions. Some description…
This comment was posted on Nature.com in response to “Opportunities and challenges for a sustainable energy future” by Steven Chu and Arun Mujumdar. In it, Amory Lovins argues that integrating the Department of Energy’s technological solutions with innovative design, strategy, and public policy could solve many energy problems. The original…
In this interview in Currents, the Navy’s energy and environmental magazine, Amory Lovins shares his ideas for an enduring and resilient Department of Defense.
In writing “The Electric Car, Unplugged” for the New York Times of Sunday, March 25, John Broder and his informants assert that “enthusiasm over electrification in the industry has begun to flicker and the price of battery technology remains stubbornly high.” Yet they unaccountably omit the…
David Owen continues to blame energy efficiency for the ills he ascribes to growth and wealth. His misunderstandings of “rebound” in energy use were devastatingly rebutted when he published them in The New Yorker, and now he’s expanded them to book length. But his post here…
Ray C. Anderson was the most visionary, inspiring, and effective green industrialist of the late 20th and early 21st century if not of all time. A brilliant Georgia Tech engineer and entrepreneur with the competitive drive and leadership qualities of an ex-quarterback, he created Atlanta-based Interface, Inc. and led it to unique success in turning green into gold.
In this letter published in The New Yorker, Amory Lovins responds to David Owen’s article about energy efficiency and Jevons Paradox. This letter was published in the January 17, 2010 issue of The New Yorker and is reprinted with kind permission of the magazine. The original article, “The Efficiency Dilemma,”…
In this article written in response to the Japanese nuclear crisis in 2011, Amory Lovins explains why nuclear energy is costly and dangerous and a poor alternative to renewable energy sources. Lovins argues that American nuclear plants are as risky as the Japanese plants and that there are lessons to…