Everything about Amory Lovins totally explained
Amory Bloch Lovins (born
November 13 1947 in
Washington, DC) is Chairman and Chief Scientist of the
Rocky Mountain Institute, a
MacArthur Fellowship recipient (1993), and author and co-author of many books on
renewable energy and
energy efficiency.
Lovins has worked professionally as an
environmentalist and been an influential American voice for a "
soft energy path" for the
United States and other nations. He has advocated energy-use and energy-production concepts based on conservation, efficiency, the use of renewable sources of energy, and on generation of energy at or near the site where the energy is actually used. His works include
Winning the Oil Endgame,
Factor Four with
Hunter Lovins and
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, and
Natural Capitalism with Hunter Lovins and
Paul Hawken. In the 1990s, his work with the Rocky Mountain Institute included the design of an ultra-efficient automobile, the
Hypercar.
Lovins has provided expert testimony in eight countries and more than 20 US states, briefed 19 heads of state, and published 29 books and several hundred papers.
Early history and personal life
Lovins spent much of his youth in
Silver Spring, Maryland and in
Amherst, Massachusetts. In
1964, as a former award-winning high-school science whiz, Lovins entered
Harvard University. After two years there, he transferred to
Magdalen College,
Oxford, England, where he studied experimental physics. He became a Junior Research Fellow in Oxford’s
Merton College, where he studied for two years and earned a master of arts (M.A.). He has received many
honorary degrees recognizing his work.
In 1979 he married
L. Hunter Sheldon, a lawyer, forester, and social scientist. Hunter received her undergraduate degree in
sociology and political studies from
Pitzer College, and her J.D. from
Loyola University's School of Law. They separated in 1989 and divorced in 1999.
Work
Friends of the Earth
It was during his days in the UK that Lovin's career as a writer began. Having become a devotee of
Snowdonia National Park, Lovins left academia. In 1971 he wrote about the endangered Welsh park in a book commissioned by David Brower, president of the environmental organization
Friends of the Earth.
Lovins described the "hard energy path" as involving inefficient liquid-fuel automotive transport and centralized electricity-generating facilities. He saw these as giant facilities, often burning fossil fuels (for example,
coal or
petroleum) or harnessing a fission reaction, that were greatly complicated by electricity wastage and loss. The "
soft energy path" which he wholly preferred involves efficient use of energy, diversity of energy production methods (and matched in scale and quality to end uses), and special reliance on "
soft energy technologies." Soft energy technologies are those based on
solar,
wind,
biofuels,
geothermal, etc. For Lovins, large-scale electricity production facilities had an important place, but it was a place that they were already filling; in general, more wouldn't be needed. One of his main concerns, was the danger of committing to
nuclear energy to meet a society's energy needs. to provide an example to Detroit), electricity, water, semiconductor, and real estate.
Lovins has briefed 19 heads of state, provided expert testimony in eight countries and more than 20 states, and published 29 books and several hundred papers. His clients have included Accenture, Allstate, AMD, Anglo American, Anheuser-Busch, Bank of America, Baxter, Borg-Warner, BP, Bulmer, Carrier, Chevron, CIBA-Geigy, CLSA, Coca-Cola, Corning, Dow, Equitable, GM, Hewlett-Packard, Interface, Invensys, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Monsanto, Motorola, Norsk Hydro, Prudential, Rio Tinto, Royal Ahold, Royal Dutch/Shell, Shearson Lehman Amex, STMicroelectronics, Sun Oil, Texas Instruments, UBS, Wal-Mart, Westinghouse, Xerox, major real-estate developers, and over 100 utilities. Public-sector clients have included the
OECD,
UN, Resources for the Future, the Australian, Canadian, Dutch, German, and Italian governments, 13 US states, Congress, and the U.S. Energy and Defense Departments.
"Phasing out nuclear power should make our electricity cost not more but less."
"What we thought of as isolated pathologies, scarcities of work or hope or security or satisfaction, are not isolated at all, in fact they're intimately related, they're all caused by the same thing, namely the interlocking waste of resources, of money, and of people."
"I don't do problems, I do solutions," while being interviewed by Elizabeth Kolbert for a New Yorker article.
"Energy efficiency isn't just a free lunch, it's a lunch you're paid to eat."
"...new nuclear plants are simply unfinanceable in the private capital market, and the technology will continue to die of an incurable attack of market forces—all the faster in competitive markets. This is true not just in the U.S., where the last order was in 1978 and all orders since 1973 were cancelled, but globally."
Publications
Books authored or co-authored by Amory Lovins:
Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profit, Jobs and Security (2005) ISBN 1-84407-194-4 (Available Online in PDF
)
The Natural Advantage Of Nations: Business Opportunities, Innovation And Governance in the 21st Century (2004) ISBN 1-84407-121-9
Small Is Profitable: The Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size (2003) ISBN 1-881071-07-3
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (2000) ISBN 1-85383-763-6
Energy Unbound: A Fable for America's Future (1986) ISBN 0-87156-820-9
Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security (1982 re-released in 2001) ISBN 0-931790-28-X (Available Online in PDF)
Soft Energy Paths: Towards a Durable Peace (1977) ISBN 0-06-090653-7
Harvard Business Review on Business and the Environment
Factor Four: Doubling Wealth - Halving Resource Use: A Report to the Club of Rome
A Road Map for Natural Capitalism
World Energy Strategies: Facts, Issues, and Options
Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy
Energy/War: Breaking the Nuclear Link
The Energy Controversy: Soft Path Questions and Answers
The First Nuclear World War: A Strategy for Preventing Nuclear Wars and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear power: Technical Bases for Ethical Concern
Least-Cost Energy: Solving the C02 Problem
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